


I Been Blind

by jemariel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Cas being a horndog, First Time, Frottage, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Human Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Internalized homophobia (very mild), M/M, Masturbation, Masturbation in Shower, Newly Human Castiel (Supernatural), Objectification, Porn Watching, Porn with Feelings, Timeline What Timeline, suggestion/discussion of m/f and m/m/f in porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:41:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28282626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemariel/pseuds/jemariel
Summary: Castiel is in love with humanity. At least, so long as he's not the oneexperiencing it.A lighthearted smutty romp wherein Dean helps Cas navigate the tricky minefield of human needs.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 271
Kudos: 699





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Chrisms!! It's been a long damn year and we all deserve some tropy rompy smutty fun. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Some feelings got in the porn, but y'know, that's not unusual.
> 
> Thanks a billion to [Elanor](https://elanor-n-evermind.tumblr.com</a) for the cheerleading and beta reading. <3

Being human is very confusing.

Castiel has flirted with humanity before. He’s peripherally aware that humans need to do things like sleep, eat, and relieve themselves (and while he’s never understood the need for euphemisms in the latter case, there are only so many times Sam and Dean can berate him for using technical terms before the habit breaks). 

But he’s never been quite _this_ human, nor for this long. It’s a strange and enlightening experience. He’s trying to pay more attention to the cues his body sends him, but it’s difficult. It takes conscious effort. He’s only just starting to recognize the way his head will ache, the gnawing hollowness in the center of him, the sudden sharp downswings of his mood. When he gets like that, the slightest aroma from the kitchen is enough to activate his salivary glands.

Today, it’s Dean heating up onions and garlic in a pan of oil, a pile of tomatoes and bell peppers waiting their turn on the cutting board. Cas watches Dean’s forearms as he deftly flicks the onions around; he listens to the sizzle of the oil, inhales the delectable savor that’s so thick in the air he can almost taste it already.

Then his stomach gives a painful pang and a long, gurgling growl.

“Wow, Cas,” Dean says with a grin tossed over his shoulder. “I heard that from over here. Hungry?”

Hungry. Castiel nods, slow, stupefied. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

Castiel wonders just how many of humanity’s great tragedies can be traced back to hunger. Many, he supposes.

The pan-seared steak and vegetables are, of course, delectable. Castiel may not quite understand hunger yet, but he definitely understands the satisfaction that comes with sating it. 

The need for sleep is equally bizarre, especially in the bunker, where natural daylight is difficult to come by. Maybe it would be easier if Castiel could see the sun rise and set, plugging into that steady cosmological rhythm that governs most of life on Earth. But even then, he wonders if he’d notice the signs: the itch behind his eyes or the heaviness of his head, the bone-deep lethargy that has him sinking into whatever surface is handy when the urge becomes too great to ignore—be that a chair, the floor, or slumped over a book of lore on the library table.

“Cas,” murmurs a low voice, a firm hand shaking his shoulder. “Hey, buddy. C’mon.”

Castiel’s thoughts are slow and muddy, his eyelids weighted down. In the too-bright light, he can see Dean in his boxers and a T-shirt, hair askew. “What do you want?” he grumbles, feeling like his teeth might be made of gravel.

“It’s two in the morning,” Dean says, bemused concern tucked into the smirk at the corner of his mouth. “You wanna hit the hay?”

Castiel merely stares. What hay? He wants to ask why he would perform violence on agricultural products, but the words get lost on the way to his tongue. It’s irrelevant. He wants nothing more than to put his head back down on the book he’s been using as a pillow. It wasn’t comfortable—his neck and back are complaining loudly—but it served its purpose.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Dean says. “Come on. All good little angels need their beauty sleep.”

Castiel doesn’t even bother trying to parse that. Dean is steering him toward his room with an authoritative march, and before he even really knows what’s happening, Castiel is planted face-first on the bed, still in his jeans.

“I’m not gonna tell you how to live your life, man,” Dean’s saying. “But trust me. Sleeping in a real bed? Worth it.”

Cas tries to answer, but he’s also sinking deeper into the downy cloud supporting his weight and not sure what makes it out of his mouth is even English.

Dean’s right. Beds are amazing. What unique joy humans can derive out of the simplest of things. He spends a lot of time thinking about that after he wakes up, several hours later and feeling much more refreshed. He thinks about how knowledgeable Dean is about so many human things, all the sensory pleasures of life.

Dean once said he was no role model. Castiel had begged to differ. This is just one more example where Castiel could learn a lot from Dean Winchester.

The worst of all of Castiel’s new and confusing human needs, however, is not the hunger nor the exhaustion nor the frequent trips to the bathroom.

No, the worst is the aching, nagging, persistent arousal.

In theory, he knows what to do about it. Human fascination with their own genitals is the stuff of legends and the source of much confusion in heaven. Castiel is hardly unfamiliar with the process of masturbation. But whenever he tries—oh, at first it feels great. The little twitches and zings over his skin, the sweet drag of friction over his flesh.

But it never goes anywhere. Like trying to scratch an itch he can’t reach. He cups the swollen flesh between his legs and strokes in an uncertain mimicry of what he thinks he’s supposed to do, and—that’s it. Eventually, his mind wanders, and the drag of his fist becomes more painful than pleasure, a frustrating plateau that leaves him sore and snappish. After several attempts, it’s almost not worth the effort to try, not when all it means is another dead-end where his testicles ache and his erection takes longer and longer to die down.

It’s definitely his most persistent human annoyance. Perhaps because it’s proving to be the most difficult craving to satisfy.

~

They’re in a diner a few states east of Kansas, and Castiel can’t stop staring at the waitress. He knows it’s rude, but she’s wearing a thin T-shirt in the warmth of late spring, and the way it cups under the soft roundness of her breasts draws his eye like a hypnotist. It’s low-cut enough that he can see the tops of them as well, the shadowy valley in between, her skin powder-soft all the way up to her delicate throat, wide lips and doe-brown eyes— 

There’s a kick at his ankles under the table, Dean with his eyebrows raised in expectation, and he has to clear his throat to un-stopper it. “Um. Pancakes, please.” He hasn’t even looked at the menu. His palms are sweating. 

“Short stack, or tall?” she asks him.

“Uh, tall.”

“I bet you are,” she says with a wink as she turns back to the kitchen.

“Dude, what the hell?” Dean asks as soon as she’s out of earshot. “You can’t just—just stare at women like that.”

Castiel unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth but can’t find words to put on it. “I know,” he groans, dropping his face into his hands. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” Although he can think of several things that haven’t. Or, wait. That’s backwards. Is it? Not always.

God help him, he needs release.

“How do you do it, Dean?” comes out of his mouth all at once, plaintive and desperate.

“Do what?”

“Find—companionship.” 

“Uh.” Dean shifts in his seat, clears his throat. “You mean like Pretty McBusty over there? Are you asking me how to pick up chicks?”

Not exactly, and not specifically, but it’s close enough, so Castiel just nods miserably.

Dean hmms and haws for a minute, laughing awkwardly and fiddling with his little packet of napkin-wrapped silverware. “Alright,” he finally says once the adhesive paper jacket has been peeled into four pieces. “First off, learn to control your eyeballs. Okay? It’s gonna get you a slap in the face, and you’ll have earned it.”

Cas nods, shame heating up his neck. “I’ll try.”

“Right. Next up, you wanna try and start a conversation. Try a compliment.”

Cas swallows against the hammering of his pulse in his throat, startling a little when he sees the waitress coming back over. Don’t stare at her chest, he reminds himself firmly, forcing his gaze up to her face.

“Alright, two coffees,” she says, placing them in front of Dean and Castiel. “You boys need anything else?”

Dean raises his eyebrows at Cas, saying nothing. “Uh,” Cas starts. “You have beautiful—” He can’t say breasts. Certainly he cannot say breasts. What does he say? Oh god, is he staring at her breasts again?

“Eyes,” Dean’s voice cuts in. “Beautiful eyes. My friend here was just mentioning to me—” There’s a harder kick to his ankles; Castiel folds in on himself in shame.

By the time he manages to look up again, the waitress has gone, and Dean is staring at him with deep disappointment. “Dude,” he says, spreading his hands on the tabletop. “What the hell? I’ve seen awkward, but that—that was just sad.”

With a sigh, scrubbing his face with his hands, Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t know. Is this what it’s always like?” he asks, desperate. “The ache, the pressure—I just feel—” He clenches his fists and squeezes them between his thighs. So help him, he can feel his pulse in his dick in the middle of this diner. “Like I’m going to explode if I don’t do something soon.”

Dean cocks his head at him, a calculating look. “Are you, uh.” He clears his throat, his ears turning ruddy. “You are, uh, cleaning out the pipes, right?”

Castiel squints. “I have no experience as a plumber.”

“No, I mean—” Dean drops his head and continues in the low tones humans often use when discussing uncomfortable topics. “Jerking off, Cas. Are you taking care of yourself?”

Cas bites his lip, shame bubbling like acid under his tongue. “It—I can’t.”

“You can’t.” It should be a question, but Dean says it flat, disbelieving.

“It won’t work. I’ve tried, believe me, but I—”

Two plates of breakfast foods proceed the waitress back to their table. “Here you go, french toast with a side of bacon and eggs, and one tall stack of pancakes,” she says, and Castiel’s baser impulses are abruptly short-circuited by the smell of butter and syrup.

“Thank you,” he manages to say, looking up at her eyes, at last. “And—I’m sorry for my behavior.”

She gives him a tired smile. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” she says, and walks away without another word. Castiel tries not to watch the sway of her hips; it’s difficult.

As Castiel starts digging into his pancakes, it takes him a minute to notice that Dean isn’t eating. He looks up, mouth full of syrupy carbs, and finds Dean staring at him again.

“Won’t work?” he asks once they’ve made eye contact.

Castiel swallows and puts down his fork. “No,” he says. “I seem to reach a plateau, and after that there’s nothing but chafing.”

Dean huffs with a bounce of his eyebrows and finally starts in on his breakfast. “Well, then you’re probably doing it wrong.”

“And how, exactly, does one do it right?” Castiel snaps.

Dean freezes, a flush climbing up his neck. When he speaks, it’s jumbled around half a mouthful of bacon. “Can we talk about this when we’re not in public, please?”

Hope jumps under Cas’s skin. “So you’ll help me?”

There’s about ten seconds where neither of them moves. Dean stares at him, slowly masticating his bacon. Castiel has the sensation of teetering on the edge of a knife, ready to fall in one direction or the other, or possibly be sliced up the middle.

Finally, Dean says, “Sure, I guess,” and turns his attention doggedly to his french toast. “Now, shut up and eat your pancakes.”

With the promise of some kind of relief stirring in his belly, Castiel does as he’s told.

~

The second they get into the car, Dean feels the tension climb right back up his neck. What the hell had he gotten himself into? He’s tried to be attentive to Cas and his brand-spanking-new humanity, but this—this is a whole new level of weird. And now that they’re out of the safety of a public diner, all alone in the front seat of the car, there’s nothing saying Cas won’t try to talk about it again.

Not that he hadn’t given Sammy the birds and the bees talk, but this is different. It’s _Cas._ Maybe it’s just because he’s a four-billion-year-old friggin angel of the lord who should, by all rights, have been around the block a few dozen times by now—but no. They’d been over this. No “cloud seeding” for Castiel. Which was maybe a weird conversation to have, even at the time.

Whatever. All Dean knows now is that he’s got a horny, confused fallen angel in his passenger seat, and that makes him jumpy as fuck.

He doesn’t really want to look too closely at why. It’s just weird. That’s all.

Cas doesn’t break the silence, though. He’s frowning at a brochure he’d picked up at a rest stop in Kentucky. Something about horses. 

“Hey, why don’t you call Sam, let him know we’ll be back by dinnertime,” Dean suggests. 

Dutifully, Cas puts down the brochure and digs out his phone. Dean relaxes into the road noise and the familiar dance of highway traffic for a few minutes, tuning out their brief conversation and tapping his fingers to the low grind of Kashmir.

“Okay. We’ll see you then.” Cas hangs up with a beep, then says, “Sam is heading out on a rugaru case in Wyoming.”

Dean’s head whips around. “What?”

“He’s meeting Eileen to provide backup,” Cas reports. “He might be gone as long as a week. He’ll check in.”

“Do we need to meet up with him?”

Cas shakes his head. “He was very insistent that we return to the bunker.”

Dean snorts, even though his heart is going crazy under his ribs. “Yeah, I’ll bet he was,” he says.

Perfect. Just what he needs. Just him and Cas. Alone. In an empty bunker. With a weird-ass conversation about _finding release_ hanging between them. It’s enough to make a guy’s palms sweat.

Awesome.

~

Castiel may not have a lot of experience with humans, but he does know how to tell when someone—Dean in particular—is uncomfortable.

They make it back to the bunker without talking about anything more consequential than pit stops and the weather, even though little zings and sparks of anticipation are firing constantly throughout Cas’s body. He’d spent most of Missouri staring at Dean’s confident hands on the wheel and feeling unable to keep air in his lungs. The light had been long and golden, and it turned Dean’s visage into something like the soul that Castiel can no longer see: the color of pale honey, burnished to shining, pleasing planes and lines defined by both brightness and shadow. By the time they’re climbing out of the car into the bunker’s garage, the shift of his own muscles under the denim of his jeans is enough to make his blood race.

“You hungry?” Dean asks, making a beeline straight for the kitchen. “I think I’m hungry.”

“Dean.”

Dean stops in his tracks, halfway through the map room. He turns, and his eyes are so wide, his whole face tight like he’s staring down all the armies of hell, and it occurs to Cas that maybe he’s being selfish. Maybe this is another case like the elimination euphemisms, where he’s missing some crucial point of human decency. They are, as a rule, remarkably precious about sexual matters, even though it’s a near-unanimous fixation.

So he sighs, and takes a step back from where he’d been edging closer into Dean’s personal space. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

“What?” Dean sounds strangled.

“You don’t have to help me with my—problems. If you don’t want to. And you clearly don’t want to.”

“Cas, no, that’s—” Dean sighs, swiping a hand over his face and leaning against the map table. He looks like a puppet with the strings suddenly cut, all the tension zapping out of him to the floor. “You can ask. Okay? You can always ask. You’re new at this, I know, I just—” He stops, and his gaze sweeps up and down Cas’s form once, twice, carrying with it an inexplicable wave of heat. Cas’s skin prickles under his clothing. “I don’t know how you want me to help with this, exactly.”

It occurs to Castiel that he doesn’t know either.

But all at once, with Dean in front of him looking soft and rumpled from the day’s drive, gray henley sleeves pushed up to his elbows—by the toe-curling flash that runs through him, Castiel thinks he might have some ideas.

What if it were _Dean’s_ hands on him, he wonders. The thought alone is enough to quicken his breath. He may not be able to see Dean’s soul anymore, but he remembers the touch of it—searing, electric. In some senses, it was true what Hael had said, that the moment Castiel had laid a hand on Dean Winchester, he had been lost. Or maybe he had been freed. Either way, his path had been irrevocably altered by the touch of Dean.

Perhaps it could be again.

Yes. God yes, the idea of it is like harnessing a lightning bolt. He can feel it in his palms, can taste it in the air he breathes—he _wants_ . More than just the formless desire for release, he _wants._

He wants _Dean._

The clap of Dean’s palms together is as loud and sudden as a jolt of thunder. “Porn!” he announces gleefully.

Castiel blinks. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what you need. _Porn._ ” And he looks so endearingly pleased with himself that Castiel can’t find it in him to object. 

He does squint, though, skepticism crawling up onto his brow. “You mean like the pizza man.”

“Exactly. Come on, get your laptop. I’ll point you to the right place, and then you can, I dunno, figure it out from there.” He’s pressing forward already, brushing past Cas with barely inches to spare on his way toward the bedrooms. 

“Dean—” Cas starts to protest, following. “Dean, I don’t think visual stimulation is going to help.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dean says. 

~

Dean’s a genius. Cas probably just isn't engaging his brain enough. All the guy needs is a little external stimulus and _boom._ He’ll be able to take it from there. Right?

“Okay,” he says, waving a hand in the general direction of Cas’s bed. “You—you get yourself comfortable. Not too comfortable,” he amends, seeing Cas’s hands going straight for his jeans. “Uh, wait ‘til I’m out of the room for that. But. Yeah. Just, just sit down.”

Cas does. Dean grabs his laptop off the table and perches at the foot of the bed—bad move, Cas’s bare feet are right by his hip, and the restless curling of his toes has them brushing against the seam of Dean’s back pocket. He needs to cut his toenails.

Focus, Dean.

With the laptop open in his lap, Dean navigates to a couple of his tried-and-true favorites. “Alright, here.. Just, um, just browse until you find something that hits the right buttons, and then, y’know.” He hands the computer to Cas and risks a glancing blow of eye contact.

Cas looks a little lost, brow furrowed and staring at the screen in the same way he’d first investigated pineapple on pizza. “What am I looking for?” he asks.

“Damned if I know,” he says, getting to his feet. “You’ll know it when you find it?”

Then Cas is giving him this _look_ —shit. He’d think he was pissed, but that doesn’t seem right. He’s just very intense, pinning Dean’s brain to the back of his skull with a single gaze, sucking his pink lower lip between his teeth. 

Dean’s stomach flips, and whatever it turns over is hot and melty and slides right down into his— 

“Okay!” Dean says, too loud. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Dean—”

“Listen, Cas, I’m not gonna hold your hand through this.” But the intensity in Cas’s face has drooped back into lost and forlorn, edging into wide-eyed panic, and Dean is weak. “If you have any trouble or questions, or—I dunno, just call me or something.”

And with that, he skeedaddles. Cas’s door slams shut behind him, and he exhales.

Good. Right.

… Now what?

For lack of anything better to do, Dean wanders to his room. Might as well take the edge off. He’s thinking about porn, now, so, sure, whatever. Cas is going to be occupied for the foreseeable future, probably—unless he goes off like a friggin’ rocket, but who knows—so Dean’s got some time to himself.

Might as well.

Doesn’t mean anything.

He shuts the door very firmly, strips down to his boxers, and lays out on the bed. Gets his laptop and navigates to one of the sites he’d pointed Cas toward. He’d spied a dark-haired, amply endowed woman getting speared by a nice, thick cock on the front page, and sure enough, there she is. The video claims her name is Christina, but who the hell knows. She’s got her eyes rolled back in her head in apparent bliss. He loads up the video and is more than a little pleased with himself for how quickly his cock fills up in his palm. Hey, when a guy’s staring forty in the face, he’s allowed. 

The video plays in silence. With his right hand he clicks around to find the good spots. Yeah, that one—right there, where she’s got her knees hiked up to her armpits and her faceless partner is hammering home with enthusiastic rolls of his hips. Her tits jiggle just a little, nice and perky—and for a hot second he wonders if Cas is watching this video. He’d really seemed to enjoy the waitress’s tits, and this lady’s got a nice pair. Who’da thunk Cas would be a boobs man? 

Dean clicks around some more, pulling his dick out of his boxers and into the light. He’s rock-hard and already leaking onto his own fingers as he pulls his foreskin back and forth. He hadn’t had a foreskin before Cas had pulled him out of hell and rolled him back to factory settings. That had been weird. Relearning how to work his dick at the age of thirty? Wild. Not a lot of guys can say they’d had the chance to experience both. At least not in that order. 

He wonders if Cas is cut or uncut. He probably has whatever equipment Jimmy’d had, and he’d mentioned chafing, so—so he’s probably cut, the shiny head all exposed and— 

Oh god, why is he thinking about Cas’s dick?

What’s worse—why is it really, _really_ doing it for him?

Dean’s had his eyes shut for the last several minutes, jerking like he’s ready to run a marathon and completely ignoring Christina and her perky tits in favor of thinking about his buddy jerking off in the other room. Fuck. He wonders if Cas has come yet. Probably not. He’s probably still exploring, all confused but hopefully starting to figure out what feels _good_ , how to make himself feel _good_. Dean works himself faster and faster, tighter, abandoning himself to the images his brain throws at him because when you’re this close to the edge, whatever works, you go with. Fuck, he wonders if Cas gets red in the face. He wonders what kind of noises he could get Cas to make, if his voice would go deep and grunty or high and whiny, wonders if he—

His phone buzzes, knocking Dean’s pleasure sideways. His eyes fly open and his hand keeps moving on his dick, but it’s gone, the release he’d been chasing slips further and further away with each long vibration cycle.

Phone call. Goddammit.

Frustrated, Dean lets go of himself, flops over like a fish, and reaches off the side of the bed for his pants. A feeble echo of pleasure whines through him as he rubs himself against the blankets.

If it’s Sam calling to check in, he’s going to—

It’s not Sam.

It’s Cas.

Shit. He’d said to call him if he still had trouble.

Heart pounding on his tongue and in the hard flesh between his legs, Dean sits up on the bed and swipes to answer. “Hey—”

“What do I do about the chafing?” Cas asks in a strained, desperate voice. In the background, Dean can hear—the guy’s got the friggin’ volume up on the porn, and he hears—

Masculine grunting. That’s all, just a guy’s voice panting and—

Dean’s brain skitters away from that like a cockroach from a flashlight. “Uh.”

“It hurts, Dean.” Cas sounds flat-out miserable, and all at once Dean feels like an asshole. He almost drops his face into his hand, then remembers that there’s precome all over his fingers, and he stops himself.

“Okay, uh. Do you have anything slick handy? Lotion, or—” Get over yourself and say it, Winchester. “Y’know, lube?”

There’s a small silence, and Dean can still hear the guy in the video going to town. He almost tells Cas to pause the damn thing, but then he’s speaking again. “Nothing that I could retrieve without leaving the room, no.”

Dean licks his lips. “Yeah, stay put, why dontcha. I’ll—I’ll bring you—something.”

Oh, god, what did he just get himself into?

“Thank you,” Cas breathes, heavy with gratitude. “That will help with the chafing?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean says, getting to his feet and tucking his barely softened dick back into his boxers. It makes an obscene tent, so he pulls it up against his belly and straps it down with the waistband. It’ll have to do. He rummages through his bedside table for an oily little squeeze-tube that he hasn’t been able to spend nearly enough time with lately. He wipes off some of the spillage with a corner of his sheet, saying, “Hold on a second, let me just—okay. Got it. Alright. Are you decent?” Not hanging up the phone, he crosses to his bedroom door and makes his way out into the hall.

“If you’re asking if I’m clothed, no, I’m not,” Cas says, prim and fussy even though the images he puts in Dean’s brain are anything but.

“Alright, well just—get under the covers or something. I don’t need you poking my eye out.”

“Are you coming here?” He sounds suddenly breathless. Startled, probably.

“No, I’ll just—hold on.”

He’s outside Cas’s door, and he really didn’t think this part through.

“I’m gonna open the door and toss this in to you,” he says.

“Okay.”

“I’ll try not to look,” he says.

“Okay.”

"I'm hanging up, now," he says, because Cas can probably hear him through the door anyway. 

"Okay." 

Dean clicks the phone off and swallows hard. Tries to control his breathing, his heart beating hard and fast under his sternum. Swallows again.

He unlatches the door with the hand still holding the phone. The hinge squeaks.

Now or never, Winchester. 

“Incoming!” he cries, and hucks the lube in like a grenade.

He tries. He tries real hard not to look, and Cas has done the polite thing of pulling a blanket up over himself.

But he has an answer to whether or not Cas gets red in the face—he does—and he can see Cas’s arm still moving furtively, probably painfully, under the blankets—Jesus, was he touching himself while _on the phone with Dean??—_ and he has just enough time to take a flashbulb memory of the W of concentration etched into his brow, the way his lower lip has been caught between straight white teeth, the blotchy red flush making its way down his neck and chest— 

He slams the door.

Stands there, frozen in place, for an interminable measure of moments, trying to commit every detail to memory without actually remembering it.

In his hand, the hand on the doorknob, his phone vibrates again, with a text message this time.

It’s from Cas.

_Cas: Thank you._

Some tension sighs its way out of Dean’s shoulders.

_Dean: You think you can figure out what to do with that?_

Why the hell is he asking? He should just wash his hands of this whole thing—literally, he’s still got dried precome on his fingers. Gross.

_Cas: I assume I apply it to my genitals._

With shaking fingers and a lot of backtracking, Dean types out:

_Dean: Yep. Might be cold at first but itll warm up. Use enough to slick everything but not too much that you can’t get any friction_

He probably doesn’t need to go into this much detail, but it’s easier in text, somehow. More distant, in spite of the fact that he’s still leaning against the bedroom door. If he cranes his ear just right, he can still hear the groans from the guy in the video.

Or maybe that’s Cas.

Holy shit, is that Cas?

Dean jolts off the door as if he’s been poked with a cattle prod, even as a heavy bass pulse of blood pounds his cock back to life.

The phone buzzes again.

_Cas: Than k yoy_

Son of a bitch.

Cas doesn’t make typos.

_Dean: Why are you still texting me???_

_Cas: Wjy are you stil standing outside ny door ?_

_Cas: A d why were yu in your boxera_

Okay. Fuck. Yep. Dean needs to leave. Now. Like, yesterday, actually.

He turns on his heel and marches back to his own room, determined to ignore his phone for the rest of the evening.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potential Warning Note: This chapter and the next get into some frank discussion of pornography and objectification of women's bodies. I've tried to toe the sensitivity line while also keeping Dean, particularly, in character. Disclaimer that the opinions expressed by the characters are not necessarily (or at least not always) the opinions of the writer.
> 
> Happy 2021 y'all! <3

“Orgasm is incredible.”

In hindsight, Castiel probably should have waited until Dean had set down his coffee. 

“Jeeze, Cas, you ever hear of ‘good morning’?” Dean grouses, reaching for a dishtowel and mopping up coffee from his robe, his hand, and the counter in front of him. 

“Sorry,” Cas says, moving to sit at the table. “Is it hot?” 

Dean’s head whips up to stare at him, wide-eyed. “What?”

“The coffee.” 

“Oh. Uh. No, it’s—I mean. Not anymore.” 

“Good.” Cas would hate to cause Dean injury. He watches him sopping the coffee from the front of his white T-shirt. The shirt has turned slightly translucent with the liquid, which has Castiel feeling… hungry. That’s not the right word, but it’s the closest one he has.

Dean catches his stare, but very quickly looks away. “So. You, uh, found somethin’ that worked for you?” 

Cas shakes himself. “What? Oh, the pornography.”

Dean’s eyes roll skyward, and he pours more coffee for himself and a second one for Castiel. “Yes, Einstein, the porn. You get your junk working?”

“More or less. I found most of the recommended videos fairly dull and tasteless.”

“Cas, it’s _porn._ ”

Cas continues. “So many of them break down an act of physical pleasure and human connection to solely the contingent body parts. A penis rapidly entering and exiting a vagina is not, on its own, a terribly appealing sight.”

Dean’s coffee mug hits the table with a thunk. “Cas, you gotta—I dunno, get your brain involved.”

“My brain?”

“Yeah, you know. Imagine—” Dean licks his lips, pink and damp and distracting. “Imagine that’s _you_ , you know? Think about how good it would feel.”

“If that were my penis?” Castiel assumes.

Dean shifts in the kitchen chair, the hand not holding the coffee mug clenching into a fist. “Exactly.”

For a moment, Castiel lets himself think about that. “I have no basis for comparison,” he says.

“That never stopped a single thirteen-year-old boy,” Dean says with a smirk into his coffee cup.

Cas regards him at an angle. “But I’m not a thirteen-year-old boy,” he says. “I’m several billion years old in the body of a man in his early forties.”

Dean shrugs. “Doesn’t make that much difference, does it?”

Cas doesn’t know the answer to that, so he redirects. “Regardless, I did find some useful videos.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Cas nods. “Male masturbation videos proved to be the most instructional.”

Much to Castiel’s perplexion, Dean buries his face in both hands. His groan of “Jesus, Cas” comes out muffled. 

“Have I said something wrong?” 

“No, just—look, porn’s not supposed to be instructional, it’s supposed to be—inspiring.”

“How do you mean?” 

Dean makes some vague and probably meaningful hand gestures that Castiel fails to decipher. “I mean. Y’know. What gets you hot? Revs your engine. Floats your boat and all that jazz.” 

“Humanity’s plethora of euphemisms for genital functions will never cease to confound me.” 

Dean’s eyes roll. “Like that waitress. You seemed really into her.”

“She was very aesthetically pleasing, yes.”

“Okay, so, look for—” 

“But I was equally stimulated by the men I discovered last night.” They hadn’t merely been instructional, although he had had some success mimicking their techniques. He had been able to lose himself in—he supposed it was a fantasy, this _getting your brain involved_ concept that Dean had mentioned—the idea of watching Dean performing similar acts on himself. Or on Castiel. The thought of Dean’s hands on his flesh in place of his own had, in fact, done more to push him over the edge of completion than any of the videos he’d found.

He gets the sense, however, that it would be imprudent to mention that at this juncture.

The sound of Dean clearing his throat startles Cas from his thoughts. “So… You're, what? Bi?”

Cas tilts his head, wondering if he should point out the absurdity of trying to label something so fluid as sexual orientation. Instead, he says, “Isn’t everybody?” 

Dean chokes on his toast. “Okay. Uh. No.”

“You are, though.” 

Dean goes an interesting shade of pale, and then blotchy red in his cheeks. “How—how the hell do you know that?” 

Wrongfooted, Cas lowers his voice. "Is it supposed to be a secret?" 

Dean pushes his hands through hair; they tremble finely. “Yeah, Cas—nobody knows, okay? But seriously, how?” 

How, indeed? “I pulled your soul out of hell, Dean. I put your body back together out of ash and bone. There’s very little about you that would surprise me.” Castiel doesn’t consciously think about it often, but he’s never forgotten. It echoes in his mind like a song half-remembered. It’s written indelibly on whatever he has that counts for a soul, this intimate knowledge of Dean. 

Dean is still red, staring into his coffee like he might throw up in it.

Cas tilts his head down until he insinuates himself within Dean’s line of sight. He looks for a while, long enough that Dean gets shifty and asks, “What?” 

“I miss being able to see your soul,” Cas says. “It was a thing of beauty.”

“Uh.” Thick swallow, clenching of jaw. It’s getting easier to read these ticks and tells. “Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.” Cas sits back, and this time Dean’s eyes follow him, wary. “There’s something I don’t understand, however.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“The volume of an average human male ejaculation is around three milliliters, but by my best estimation—”

Dean stands up with a jolt, knocking his knee. “Okay, Captain Overshare. Uh, you’re probably fine, but. I’m just. Gonna go. Be. Somewhere else.” 

Cas frowns. Was it something he’d said? “Dean—Wait, Dean—” 

“What?”

“Do you want your lubricant back?” 

Dean waves a hand. “Keep it.” And storms off. 

~

Cas knows.

Cas _knows_ , and it makes Dean want to slither away and hide in a dark corner somewhere. He feels exposed, like something very small caught under a microscope. 

It’s not that he thinks there’s anything _wrong_ with it. Okay, maybe there’s a little kernel of John Winchester-brand machismo still stuck in his bone marrow, but when you’ve seen the face of literal God and he turns out to be a dick, or when you’ve spent half a lifetime in literal hell, it gets harder to be judgey about where you want to get your jollies in the real world. Life’s too frickin’ short. 

It’s just. Women have always been easy. 

Not like that. Though, sometimes. 

But he knows the script with women. He’s never had the first clue where to start with guys, so it always just seemed easier to stick to one side of the track. 

No matter how he sometimes craves the scrape of stubble against his skin. Or thinks about how muscular chests and arms might be perfect for throwing him around a little, maybe pinning him down, and that thought gets him tingling from head to toe. No matter how hard he gets when he thinks about runner’s thighs that would flex _real nice,_ or getting his fingers wrapped up in wild dark hair and seeing electric-blue eyes right up close— 

Okay, so, yeah, he’s maybe more than a little bi. 

And Cas _knows._

It’s enough to give a guy goosebumps. 

~

By early afternoon, Dean is restless. Itchy in his skin. They only just got back from the hunt, but it won’t take long for him to be bouncing off the walls, especially with Sam gone. Cas has made himself scarce since the morning, only emerging when the scent of slow-cooker beef stew starts to permeate the bunker.

“Hands off,” Dean says when Cas peers into the steaming lid. “That’s dinner.”

His little frown is damned adorable, so disgruntled and huffy, and Dean has to hide a grin. “Here,” Dean says, and tosses him half a loaf of bread. “Sandwiches.”

By the time Cas joins him at the table, Dean’s down to the crusts of his ham and cheese, and he’s already reached the bottom of his usual trawl list of news sites, weirdo-watches, and forums. There’s nothing that even kinda smells like their sort of thing, no matter how flimsy. 

“Anything?” Cas asks, lifting his sandwich to his wide-open mouth.

Dean shakes his head, slow, deliberate. “Nada,” he says, and sips on his beer.

Cas chews slowly, contemplative, watching as Dean swallows.

He keeps watching.

Dean’s toes curl in his boots. 

“So,” he starts, frowning down at the absolutely-nothing-of-interest on his computer screen. “How is this whole humanity gig treating you? Besides the Debbie Does Dallas routine.”

Cas’s head cocks, but before he can ask, Dean says, “Just google it. Later.”

Cas sits back, swallowing his bite of sandwich. Dean hears the workings of his throat in the silence of their underground home.

“It’s far more complicated than I think angels in general give you credit for,” Cas says eventually.

That gets Dean’s attention. “Oh yeah?”

Cas nods. “Your world is so small,” he says, gaze lost in the middle distance. “Everything you know consists of your body and what you can immediately see, which sounds simple, but leaves so much to the imagination. It’s such a narrow band of existence, and yet everything within that band is suddenly of paramount importance.” 

“Huh.” Dean worries a bread crumb out of his gums and thinks about that. 

“It’s such a visceral experience,” Cas continues, taking another bite of sandwich and tucking it into his molars as he keeps talking. “Hunger, pain, exhaustion, arousal. These impulses rule… everything.”

Dean huffs. “Well, don’t go selling us that short.”

“Hardly,” Cas says, and swallows again. “Only that it’s all the more impressive that humans are capable of such profound acts of beauty and compassion, given your circumstances.”

It’s the weirdest backhanded compliment he thinks humanity’s ever gotten. “Yeah, well. We do some really messed up shit, too,” Dean says.

Cas nods, contemplative. “By definition, the entire range of human good and evil is within your grasp. I just wonder where it all comes from.”

Dean’s chair scrapes as he pushes it back from the table, gathering up his plate to take it to the kitchen. Cas is staring at his hands, now, as if the secrets to all of his philosophical quandaries were etched in the lines of his palms. “Alright, Socrates, don’t hurt yourself. You gonna eat those crusts?” 

Cas sucks in a deeper breath than necessary and folds his fingers over his palms. “No. The crusts are too dry.”

“That’s what mayo’s for, buddy,” Dean says, but collects Cas’s plate for him anyway and heads back toward the kitchen.

“Dean.”

Dean turns, and Cas has followed him a few steps with a look in his eyes like a lost puppy. He hasn’t shaved yet today, his stubble dark with just a little salt around the chin. It softens his sharp jaw, and Dean feels all at once like someone hooked a fishing line behind his ribs and is yanking him forward.

“Yeah?” he asks.

Cas doesn’t answer right away. He looks like he’s struggling with something, like he wants to say— _something_ , but Dean can’t fathom what.

What ultimately comes out of his mouth is, “Would you spar with me later?”

Dean blinks. “Okay?”

“If I’m going to be of use to you on hunts, I should improve my hand-to-hand combat skills.”

Something warm and wiggling sprouts in Dean’s belly at that, confusing and ridiculous. Cas is no slouch in this department, never has been, but—well, without that angel strength, it’s probably a good idea for him to figure out exactly how to move that body of his.

Wow, words Dean did _not_ need to get stuck in his brain.

“Yeah, sure. Good idea.”

And there is absolutely no reason for Cas to smile like that about it.

~

Castiel had thought, perhaps, that once he successfully achieved orgasm, his body would calm down.

He was wrong.

Because from the first moment Dean puts him flat on his back on the exercise mats, he is uncomfortably aware of just how hard this sparring session is likely to be for him.

Words chosen carefully.

“‘Kay, you’re still acting like you’re a human pile driver,” Dean says, looming over Castiel and haloed by the old Edison-style bulbs. “You’re not. You’re just a guy. So, come at me again.”

Castiel hauls himself to his feet, tries to put the impure thoughts from his mind, and resets his stance. Dean bounces on the balls of his feet across the mat from him, loose and relaxed, easy in his muscles. 

Everything Castiel isn’t. He hasn’t forgotten the electric charge of grace fueling his body; without it, he feels clumsy and slow, out of sync with the world around him. He rolls his neck and feels it crack, then mimics Dean’s low stance. 

“Eye on the ball,” Dean says, the timbre of his voice low and encouraging. 

“There are no balls,” Cas grumbles, edging closer, trying to make an opening for himself.

Dean’s white teeth flash. “Well,” he says with a waggle of his eyebrows, and Cas darts in. A jab, dodged; a few clumsy punches, slapped away by Dean’s firm forearms. He dances back, and Cas follows, and then Dean is returning his blows with a quick lunge to the other side. _Tap-tap_ , his loose fists connect with Cas’s gut, and then— 

Ah. He grabs at Dean’s arm, the friction of sweaty skin in his hands, and he pulls. Dean’s muscles tense under his grip; their feet and legs trip around each other as they try to pull away, and Dean is grinning. So is Cas, he notices, belatedly.

Eventually, Cas manages to use his slightly greater muscular bulk to pull Dean off balance—but the moment he does, Dean’s weight shifts, and Cas finds himself in a tangle of limbs with his feet swept out from under him and Dean’s body pressing him awkwardly into the mat.

“Better,” Dean says, still on top of him and still grinning, breathing just the barest hint heavier and a faint shine of sweat across his nose.

All at once, Cas’s pulse is pounding lower. He can feel his heartbeat in every point of contact between their skin, even through clingy T-shirts and sweatpants.

Before he can quite figure out how to handle the sudden rush of _skin,_ _sweat, hands, body, oh God,_ Dean is lifting himself off, leaving Cas to haul himself to his own feet.

“Alright, square up,” Dean says, thumbing at his nose and deliberately gruff. “Let me see your stance.”

Cas has never had to think very hard about his body. As an angel, he was a pillar of strength, a wavelength refracted through a prism of bone, blood, and muscle. But now? Now, how he stands and moves matters. Who better to guide him than Dean Winchester, a man who uses his body with skill and grace in every act of his life? A nudge of toe to ankle to broaden his stance, a pair of warm palms on his shoulders to pull them back, straighten his spine, or on his hips, pulling his center of gravity into alignment.

Those hands on Cas’s hips feel like lodestones, drawing all of his attention to them. It’s hard to keep air in his lungs when Dean is standing so close behind him; he can feel his body heat, the quickening of his breath on the back of Cas's neck. Wait, why is his breath quickening? Oh, because they’ve been sparring. Obviously. Exertion. But his hands definitely linger, tightening on his hips for just half a second before leaving a genial pat as he steps away.

“Okay,” Dean says, and his voice sounds tight, strained. “Let’s go again.”

It’s better this time, faster. Dean stays on the offensive, and Cas takes every opportunity he can to dart in and strike, escaping out of range just as quickly. He taunts Dean deliberately, coming in with low blows and making Dean come to him if he wants to get his own back. Dean responds beautifully to this, grinning and swearing at him in the best of natures, and Castiel finds himself laughing even as he goes down with a poorly timed kick that Dean catches in his palms and pulls.

It’s a gleeful, slippery tangle of limbs when they hit the mat, Cas landing on his hip and then his back with Dean’s weight pressing him down. Cas tries his damnedest to wrestle Dean over onto his back, but Dean knows precisely where to hold to keep him down.

Castiel hadn’t even noticed himself getting hard.

But he notices it now, pressing against Dean’s thigh just above the knee.

The friction is incendiary.

He sucks in breath and goes stone-still, caught in suspended animation. Dean’s weight on him means he can’t move, neither forward nor backward. His eyes slam shut; his breath freezes in his chest. The heat of arousal fights against the cold wash of shame.

Dean’s throat clicks on a heavy swallow. “You good?” 

Cas taps his hand twice on Dean’s shoulder. Opens his eyes just in time to watch Dean’s throat work in a swallow before he lifts himself off Castiel’s body.

He can breathe again, but he misses the heat of Dean’s skin immediately.

“Hey,” Dean says, and when Cas looks, he’s being offered a hand up. He takes it, craving even the touch of Dean’s palm.

Disentangling their fingers after is more complicated than it should be, and there’s an inexplicable ruddy flush climbing up Dean’s neck. He scratches at the back of his head, mussing the fine, short hairs. “Showers,” he says at last. “I think that’s enough for today.”

There is no way he hadn’t noticed. They’ve barely been sparring for half an hour. Humiliation curls in his belly, a slumbering dragon on a hoard of ill-placed lust.

And yet, as he follows Dean into the long bathhouse room lined with shower stalls, his guilty eye wanders from Dean’s pertly rounded posterior up to his broad shoulders, the shifting muscles under his clinging T-shirt. The skin at the back of his neck looks delectable, sweat-sheened and flushed, and Castiel wets his suddenly dry lips. Longing surges through him, faster than a sneaker wave, pulling him down, down, down into the undertow.

He’s a terrible human, he thinks.

No, he chides himself.

He’s just human.

Yes. Angels definitely underestimate the difficulties.

~

Can’t go reading too much into things like that. Dean knows for a fact that Cas is keyed up right now, on a hair trigger. It’s gotta be like going through second puberty, right? Anyway, it's nothing personal. No reason to get excited. 

Right. He’ll just keep telling his dick that, and maybe one day it’ll get the message. 

But today is not that day. 

Cas is hot on his heels as they cross the threshold into the shower room. Dean points him toward one of the stalls near the door, then heads straight for the back wall. 

They could both use some distance, here. 

Once he’s safely behind the curtain with the hot, massaging spray pounding on his shoulders, Dean finally lets himself unclench the outer layer of his iron-hard control. 

It really, really shouldn’t feel that good to have Cas pinned under him like that. 

But God damn, it did. 

He really, really shouldn’t still be thinking about it. 

But little details keep bubbling up to the front of his brain, like the clean, masculine scent of Cas’s sweat when they’d gone down on the mat. The sharp curl of the hair behind his ear. The heat and shape of him burning right through his clothes and into Dean’s skin. The determined growl on his lips, and the way his face and neck had gone red with exertion.

From the shower at the other end of the room, the rush and splash of water against tile echoes Dean’s own. He can hear it sluicing off Cas’s body in slapping waves. As Dean wets and soaps a washcloth and starts to scrub, he lets himself sink down, heart rate slowing, muscles melting. The rush of water soothes him, mind and body; he closes his eyes and lets his attention narrow down to the rhythmic pitter-pat of the spray. 

In his most honest moments, he can admit that Cas is an attractive guy. Are you kidding? You didn’t need to occasionally want to bat for the other team to see that. (Dean thinks the metaphor might actually be pitchers and catchers, but whatever. Not like he’s ever even had the chance to get off the bench.) Dude’s got a bone structure like a Renaissance painting, all bold lines and contrast. Dean’s always been a little weak for blue eyes and dark hair; apparently that particular taste crosses gender lines just fine. 

Dean had just never thought— 

Okay, maybe he had thought. A couple times. 

But he was always so distant before. Something _other._ An angel of the lord, untouchable in more ways than one. Even if Dean could have admitted that he wanted to. 

With one hand slipping the washcloth around the base of his more-than-interested cock and the sense memory of Cas pinned under him with his hard-on pressed right into Dean’s leg, he might as well admit that he wants to.

Touch him, that is.

What had Cas been thinking in that moment? The guy’s all kinds of hair-trigger right now, which, alright, is really turning Dean’s crank. And Dean is well aware that he’s easy on the eyes. Hell, from that perspective, it makes sense. He wouldn’t mind being pinned under himself, either. 

Wouldn’t mind being pinned under Cas, either, now that he thinks about it. 

And oh, yeah, he’s thinkin’ about it. 

What would have happened if he hadn’t panicked and cut their sparring session short?

Dean has his cock standing proud in his palm before a loud sigh from the other end of the shower room reminds him that he’s not alone. As a matter of fact, the guy currently starring in some Greek-style “wrestling” in Dean’s imagination is enjoying his own shower just a few stalls down. 

Naked. And all… sudsy. 

Sonofabitch. Not helping. 

He tries, he really tries to focus on getting clean, but the scrape of the washcloth on his skin is giving him goosebumps, and he finds himself scrubbing over and over the spots that feel extra good. The shower spray streams down his front and parts over his erection like a waterfall around a rock, and there’s no sign of erosion any time soon. 

“Shit,” he mumbles to himself. 

He’s running out of time he can reasonably just hang out in the shower. With a hand wandering up his thigh, Dean wonders if he could get away with it. He’s quiet. Spending puberty in cramped motel rooms with your dad and brother will build hard-to-break habits like that. 

That’s when his brain registers the sounds from the other shower. 

That’s not just water.

He hears a choked-off groan. A muffled gasp. The rhythmic movement of a hand on flesh, furtive, secret. 

And Dean’s body ignites. 

What had been a sneaky possibility now looms enormous and inevitable like a stormfront. Biting his lip near to bleeding, Dean skates his hand up his own hard cock, the pressure making his thighs tremble. 

He keeps quiet, but only barely. Cas, meanwhile, is picking up speed. 

Fuck. Fuck, okay, they’re doing this. 

Dean’s brain slips right back into the fantasy, but he barely needs it. Not with his attention so locked on Cas, ears straining for every shuddering sigh he can hear under the spray. He can picture Cas with water and soap streaming down the lines of his muscles. Hair plastered to his forehead, eyes closed, mouth open, leaning one hand against the wall in a mirror of Dean’s own posture. Or maybe leaning back against the wall, on display, both hands free to roam, thighs dipping and trembling as he thrusts into his own hand. Dean imagines going to his knees right there in the stall and opening wide, swallowing him down, staring up the plane of Cas’s stomach and chest to his eyes, wide with shock. Or maybe—maybe Cas on his knees for _him_ , guiding his mouth open and entering in, his first cock, his first taste— 

“Fuck,” the curse escapes his lips before be can button them closed, and he freezes. Blood pounding in his ears, he stops, even though his dick whines silently at him to keep going.

Cas doesn’t stop. Cas seems to have abandoned all propriety, if he even bothered with it in the first place. A steady series of panting groans echoes off the walls, a long, drawn-out melody over the quick-tempoed _slickslickslickslick_ of his pleasure. 

Oh, goddammit. 

Dean slams his eyes shut again, his hand picking up and matching that rhythm. He’s just along for the ride now, tethered to his own personal porno soundtrack, his brain empty of anything but pleasure and _Cas—_

He can tell when Cas comes. The jerking sounds obscene and thoughtless, quickening to a peak. Then the long, heaving exhales, like he can’t keep everything, _everything_ , from rushing out of his body. Oh, Jesus. 

Dean comes. Like a freight train barreling off the end of the track, he comes, from his scalp to his toes and back, he comes. He tries to clamp his throat shut and his vision goes spotty with holding his breath, but he’s not sure he succeeds in keeping his silence. 

Cas probably heard that, he thinks, as his cock dribbles a few final spurts against his fingers. 

One more tug, nice and slow. Yeah, fuck. 

“Dean?” 

A start, a slip, and then a sharp crack of pain as Dean’s hip hits the shower floor. 

“Ah, sonofa—”

“Dean?” Cas’s voice sharpens with worry. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah—fine! Don’t—”

But Cas has already pulled back the curtain, exposing himself to Dean’s prone form. Dean closes his eyes and spares a moment to pray that the shower has already washed away the worst of his sins.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Cas says. Dean opens his eyes again, pulling himself gingerly to a sitting position. That’s gonna sting in the morning. Hell, it stings now.

“S’fine,” he says. 

Cas doesn’t move. He looks like a startled deer, and Dean’s dick is the headlights. 

On his ass, naked, wet, bruised, and still feeling the tingle of a really good orgasm along his nerves, Dean looks humiliation in the eye and gives it a friendly wave. Folding his hands demurely over his family heirlooms, Dean asks, “Can I help you?” from behind his most sarcastic smile.

Cas jumps back to reality. “Oh. I. I brought you a towel,” he says, and sure enough, he’s holding out a big white rectangle of terrycloth, identical to the one slung around his own hips.

And god, what fucking hips. The edge of razor-sharp hip bones peeking out over that towel has Dean’s mouth watering again. If he were a decade younger— 

“I didn’t want you to have to walk all the way across the room,” Cas mumbles.

Dean swallows, then reaches up—with one hand and one hand _only—_ to shut off the shower. In its wake, the silence is deafening.

“Thanks,” he says, grabbing the towel out of Cas’s outstretched hand. “Now, if you don’t mind.”

“Right. Of course.” Cas backs away, not turning around. “I’ll just, uh.”

“Yeah, why don’t you,” Dean grouses, hauling himself to his feet. Cas is still just _standing_ there, exactly like somebody who never had to deal with high school gym showers and the unspoken but rigidly enforced ettiquete that if you were gonna look, you did it fucking _discretely_. 

Screw it _._ Dean tosses the towel over his shoulder, letting everything hang out. Free as a bird and all that jazz. 

And then, just to be an asshole about it, he puts a bit of a saunter in his walk as he leaves the shower. Levels a real, genuine Blue Steel right at Cas, just to watch him clutch harder at that towel around his waist.

As he passes the stock-still former angel, Dean leans in far closer than necessary, right up to Cas's ear, and says, “Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”

Cas just stares at him.

And for a finishing touch, as he passes by him toward the door, Dean lays a solid smack right on the round of Cas’s ass. The texture of the terricloth lingers in his palm as he _(finally)_ escapes the shower room. 

Yeah. That’ll show him.

Show him what, Dean’s really not sure.

But it’ll sure as shit show him somethin’.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reiterating last chapter's warning about frank discussion of women in pornography and the potential for objectification.

Steady. Steady. Concentrate.

Carefully, Castiel takes his hand off his throbbing cock, balling it into a fist on the sheets.

He doesn’t want to come yet. 

Once Castiel had found his path to orgasm and the chafing soreness had faded, he’d raced to the finish line as quick as he could find his way across it. But he has been wandering deeper and deeper into the _impressively_ varied world of pornography, and he’d stumbled across some videos tagged “edging” that made him curious. Now, what had been frustrating has become a game, seeing how close and how many times he can approach that blissful zenith without flying off the edge. He likes how it makes his body sing.

Besides. He’s not finished thinking about Dean.

He thinks about Dean’s hands, the way they’d pinned him to the mat. He thinks about Dean’s shoulders and chest in a grimy T-shirt, Dean’s ass in sweatpants. 

He rolls over onto his front and grinds his cock into the soft friction of his sheets and remembers the sounds he’d heard from the other shower. The sounds of Dean pleasuring himself, of Dean achieving orgasm, and the way Dean had looked afterward, kneeling there under the spray, naked and starry-eyed and pink in the lips— 

He still doesn’t know for sure if Dean heard him, but he certainly heard Dean.

But traitorous desire whispers to him: what if Dean had heard him… and liked it? 

Enticing. Dangerous. 

Seductive.

He can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like an ember burning in the corner of his mind, or a popcorn kernel stuck in his tooth. (Why do humans subject themselves to such a meaningless and annoying snackfood as popcorn, anyway? And worse, why does he have such positive associations with it? Just because he and Dean had shared popcorn while watching Dean’s favorite old Western movies, Dean’s grin luminous in the reflected glow of the silver screen, doesn’t mean that popcorn itself is any more worthwhile.)

(What had he been doing?)

(Oh yes. Trying not to come.)

(Well, apparently thinking about popcorn is an effective trick on that front.)

But thinking about Dean’s smiling face, Dean’s body pressed close to his as they get comfortable on an imaginary couch, that is not at all helpful. That stirs the heat in his belly back up to a slow, simmering boil, and he feels himself slicking a wet patch of precome on his own bedclothes.

Perhaps they could watch movies in a bed. Without popcorn. 

Yes, having Dean in bed with him would be marvelous.

What does Dean want?

In spite of all of Castiel’s urgent and increasingly centered desires, this remains a large blank space.

With a huge sigh, Castiel opens his eyes, rolls onto his side and looks down his chest and stomach toward his balls and mostly hard cock, pushed up by the clench of his thighs. Then over at the men on the laptop screen and the mostly forgotten video he’d started watching, two men grunting and thrusting in a shower stall.

He could continue to do research like this.

Or he could simply ask Dean.

Not directly, no. He’ll need to speak in hypotheticals.

But if he can sufficiently worry down the wall between them on the subject of sex and sexuality, then perhaps…

Perhaps.

In the corner of Castiel’s mind lit only by that ember of desire, he begins hatching a plan.

~

Dean wakes up in a great mood. In spite of the awkwardness still lingering in the bunker, he’s got this weird feeling of optimism. Got up on the right side of the bed or something. He gets himself fully dressed before 9am and whistles his way down to the library with a spring in his step.

Cas is awake, hunched over his laptop and peering at the screen with a frown. 

“Mornin’, sunshine,” Dean greets him. 

Without a single change of expression, without taking his eyes off the screen, Cas says, “Do you ever want to hold women’s breasts still for them?” 

Dean stops in his tracks. 

“‘Scuse me?” 

“The motion looks very uncomfortable,” Cas says, still squinting at the screen. 

“Are you watching porn out here?” 

“Not for masturbatory purposes,” Cas says, clicking something on his touchpad, presumably jumping around in the video. “Merely study.” 

“I told you, this shit’s not supposed to be instructional.” 

“Then where should I turn for instruction?” Cas asks, finally looking up from the screen, all big blue eyes and grumpy-lined face, and Dean feels the words queueing up in his throat. His brain blows every whistle it has, _red alert, abandon ship, mayday, mayday, abort mission,_ and yet _—_

“You could always ask me,” he says.

Too late. 

“Ask you?” 

God _dammit._

“Yeah, sure. Why not? I mean, I’ve been around the block a few times, if you know what I mean,” he says, aiming for a brazen wink and a filthy smirk to cover the slow bleed of terror that’s going on in his belly.

Cas stares at him with a “does not compute” expression, then looks back to the porn. Then back up at Dean. “So what about the breasts?”

Okay. Good. Dean can work with breasts. Feigning casualness, Dean leans against a bookshelf and shrugs. “That’s not usually why I wanna hold onto ‘em, but yeah, sometimes they do get a little jiggly.”

“Some more than others.”

“Yeah, if they don’t move, that means they’re fake.”

Cas’s brow furrows. “Fake?”

“Yeah,” Dean says with a shrug. “Y’know, implants? Some ladies want to make their boobs bigger.”

Cas assimilates this information with a slow nod. “Are larger breasts preferable?” he asks.

“Some people think so.”

“Do you?”

Who turned up the heat in here, anyway? “I, uh.” Images of Busty Asian Beauties flash through Dean’s mind. He could go for the lewd response he has ready on his lips, but somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Not in front of Cas’s earnest, questioning face. Not when it’s just the two of them. “Honestly? Depends on who’s wearin’ em,” he says.

“How so?”

Dean shrugs again, crossing his arms over his chest. “Different body shapes, different aesthetics. They can all be attractive. It’s about the—I dunno. Charisma, I guess. Now, I have some preferences, sure, but—”

“Like what?”

Discomfort starts to itch under Dean’s belt. What’s with the third degree? “I dunno, man, what do you like?”

Cas finally stops with the staring, dropping his gaze back down to whatever’s on the laptop. “I, uh. I don’t think I have enough data points to have formed an opinion,” he says. His cheeks are pinking up, and Dean can see him examining his fingers where they’re folded in his lap.

Ha. Serves him right.

“Not enough data points? Dude, you’ve been hiding in your room for like, three days.”

“What’s your point?”

“I just kinda assumed you’d spent most of that time—y’know. Gathering data.”

Cas squints at him. “I think I should resent that assumption.”

Dean grins, then pushes himself off the shelf. “Well, Mister Hefner, show me what you got,” he says as he rounds the table.

Cas goes from pink to pale in record time, but angles his laptop so that when Dean leans over his shoulder, one hand on the back of his chair, he has a clear view. The video is paused in a classic point-of-view shot where the woman is openly on display, on her back with spread legs, but all Dean can see of the guys fucking her is their dicks, sliding in and out of—

Wait. Dicks. Plural.

One deep in her cunt. One in her mouth, her head thrown back so he can get deep.

Dean swallows on a dry throat. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Before Dean can say anything, Cas reaches up and clicks the play button.

It’s muted, thank god. But it’s bad enough, watching this woman get absolutely railed from both ends with Cas sitting _right there,_ radiating warmth and drawing way too much of Dean’s attention. As the action continues, Dean’s stupid brain loudly informs him of every single movement Cas makes, every time he shifts in his seat, every twitch of his hands or cock of his head.

Heh. Cock.

Wait, what was he doing here?

Oh, right.

“Yeah,” he says, then has to clear his throat. “Yeah, she’s, uh. Pretty bouncy.” The woman’s tits are jiggling all over the place, making big circles in time with the guy’s thrusts into her pussy, and yeah, Dean really does want to get his hands all over ‘em. Yeah. Soft. Nice.

Cas moves. Just reaches up to click to a different point in the video, but it’s enough to make Dean jump.

This must be later in the scene because now this girl’s straddling one of the guys, still impaled on his dick, while the other slowly slides into her ass from behind. From this wider angle, Dean can see more of the actual humans involved. It’s one of those videos that actually looks like real sex, and when Dean thinks about it, he’s not at all surprised that Cas would gravitate toward that. The woman seems to be having the time of her life: she’s sweaty and her hair’s all tangled, an expression of unselfconscious bliss contorting her face. It looks like she’s chanting _please please please fuck oh god yes—_

And now Dean can see more of the guys in the video, too. The one getting straddled is pale-skinned with dark whorls of hair sticking up in all directions; his hands are huge and solid on her ample hips. The one in back is tanned, freckled, more muscley, and blond, scratching his fingernails up and down her back. 

Blood pulses into Dean’s cock, lifting it against the constriction of his jeans. _Dammit._ He clears his throat again. “You’re watching this for research purposes?” he asks.

“It pays to be thorough,” Cas says, and Jesus Christ, his voice has dropped down a fucking mine shaft. _(Don’t think shaft.)_ It sounds like he gargled whiskey stones for breakfast _(don’t think stones either),_ and when Dean risks a glance at him, he’s staring hard at the video _(hard, for fuck’s sake)_ with heat in his eyes and pink in his cheeks.

Research. Uh-huh.

When Dean looks back at the video— 

Mother fucker.

The two guys are kissing.

Blondie is leaning over the girl’s shoulder, and even while his hips work in a damn fine rolling fuck, he’s locking lips with the dark-haired guy in full focus of the camera. 

It’s a good kiss, open-mouthed and messy. Dean can only stand so much of watching their tongues slip from one to the other before he goes a little light-headed.

With a dry, nervous cough, he says, “You know, it’s not gay unless balls touch.”

Cas turns to him with this _look_ , one eyebrow arched in distinct unamusement.

And they really, really shouldn’t be making eye contact right now. Not if Dean wants to keep his brain from melting right out his ears.

Blessedly, it only lasts a second before Cas turns back to the video. He clicks to an earlier spot, close to the beginning, and—

Son of a bitch.

Dean’s body isn’t sure if it wants to go ice-cold or boiling hot. Maybe both, like Tiger Balm. 

Because they’re in the oral portion of the show, and Brunet is on his back with his legs spread, the girl leaning over so he can suckle and lick at her nipples. His cock is a firm column arching up toward his belly, and the blond guy—

The blond guy kneels between his legs— 

He's opening his mouth and swallowing him down like a five-time hot-dog-eating champion. Brunet’s hips flex up into Blondie’s mouth, one of those huge hands sinking into his hair to hold him in place while he— 

“I suppose this is not gay, then?” Cas asks.

Dean startles backward so hard he knocks into one of the other chairs. “Ow, sonofa—” There goes his other hip. He and Cas aren’t even fucking, and he’s already getting bruises from him.

Jesus, brain, what the _fuck._

“Uh,” Dean stammers. “Y-yeah, no, that’s pretty—” He trails off, tongue thick in his mouth. Hell, is he _actually_ drooling? He might be.

Cas tilts his head at him. “Does this make you uncomfortable?”

He could say yes and end this. It could all be over if he just tells Cas _yes_. He’d respect it. Dean could escape with his dignity intact. 

“No,” his mouth says instead.

And there, for just a half a second, Dean could swear he spies a little smirk in the corner of Cas’s lips. A flash of something that looks like _triumph._

“Are you fucking with me right now, Cas?” Dean asks, heartbeat thrumming through all five of his limbs. 

He can almost see the halo ping into existence over Cas’s head. “I’m doing research,” he says.

“Yeah, yeah, sure you are,” Dean grouses, and then does what he should have done before this entire conversation: he turns his tail and runs.

So much for his good mood.

~

“Heya, Sammy.”

“Hey. Just checkin’ in.”

“Yeah, thanks. How's the hunt?”

“Slow going, but we're making progress.”

“Yeah, well, don't get dead, okay?”

“I'll try. How are things there?”

“Fine. Y'know. Cas is a little weird, but what else is new?”

“Weird? How so?”

“No, just—just normal weird. It's fine.”

“Do I need to come back?”

“No. Definitely not. You stay there and make googoo eyes over rugaru guts. We're fine.”

“Okay. If you insist.”

“I very much do.”

“Okay.”

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

“I don't like your tone, Sam.”

“You sure Cas is the one being weird?” 

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I'm gonna get back to it, then. And Dean?” 

“Yeah?”

“Make sure he has his angel blade.”

“What? Why?”

“Oh, you know. For protection.”

“Goodnight, Samantha.”

~

The bunker is a big place. Multiple floors, endless hallways. A guy could get lost down there. It was built to be a hub of activity, occupied by a whole secret society on a transient basis.

So how is it that, when it’s just two people, suddenly it feels like a tuna tin?

Now, Dean’s not hiding. Really, he isn’t. 

Not that it does him any good anyway. Regardless of how _not hiding_ he is, Cas has a way of sniffing him out. Whether he’s picking potatoes out of the leftover stew (yes, cold, straight from the fridge) ( _shut_ _up_ ) or working in the garage or changing light-bulbs in the conservatory, Cas keeps popping up behind him.

Always with the questions. Dean really stepped in it, offering to be Cas’s personal open-book sex library.

_“Dean, are your nipples sensitive?”_

_“You wanna run that by me again, Larry King?”_

_“I keep seeing nipple play in the videos I’ve been watching, but it doesn’t seem to do anything for me. I’m curious if it’s just for show or if it’s natural variation.”_

_“You can just say porn, Cas, I know what videos you’re watching. And, yeah, people are wired differently, I guess.”_

_“So your nipples are sensitive?”_

_“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.”_

_“Interesting.”_

_“Is it?”_

_“Close the fridge door, Dean. It’s a waste of electricity.”_

Or how about the one that nearly knocked Dean off the ladder? ( _“Do women’s vaginal secretions taste different from a man’s semen?”)_ Or the one that had made Dean crawl out from under the Impala to gawk at him? ( _“If two men appear to be approximately the same age, why would one of them be referred to as the ‘daddy’?”_ )

That hadn’t been the weirdest one, not by half. If Dean never hears Cas say the words “urethral sounding” again, it will be too soon.

And he’s done his duty as a friend, every single damn time. He’s talked him through it as calmly as he possibly can, given him as straight an answer as he’s capable of. (No jokes.) This is like having to give Sammy the Talk fifteen times over the course of a year because the kid kept bringing home more and more books from various school libraries.

Except talking to Cas about this feels like a completely different ballgame. (Heh. Balls. Okay fine, if Dean can’t giggle like a twelve-year-old in the privacy of his own brain, what’s even the point?)

But he can’t shake the feeling that all these questions are leading up to something. It’s like Cas is a whole pride of lionesses and Dean is the wildebeest being gently herded into a trap.

Which definitely is not why he’s down in a sub-basement, haphazardly sorting through boxes, looking for… something, anything, the next time he hears a stealthy “Hello, Dean.”

“Jesus—You gotta stop doing that, man, I already got two busted hips.”

Cas frowns at him, squinting under the single struggling lightbulb in this forgotten cellar Dean has wound up in. “You didn’t actually break anything,” Cas says, a statement of fact.

“Yeah, well, no. But still.” Dean turns back to the four hundred and seventh box he's been digging through and moves it off the top of the stack to get at the one underneath. Round and round they go, box by box, stack by stack. Dean's halfway through this room, and with the way he keeps stacking boxes up behind himself, he's not sure he could find a clear path back to the door. 

Cas managed to get in, though, somehow. Now he's staring around at the forest of ancient, yellowed boxes through which Dean has been slowly lumberjacking with honestly justified bewilderment. “What are you doing?”

“Cataloging,” Dean says. 

Cas’s silence is blatant accusation of Dean’s absolute lack of anything resembling a catalogue. 

“You wanna help? Grab a box.”

Dean keeps his attention on the digging for a moment, deliberately and steadfastly ignoring his companion. This box is mostly papers, ledgers, and completely uninteresting. Just like the last eight hundred boxes. Clearly, he’s in the wrong cellar. 

Finally, Cas breaks the shuffling silence. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Since when has me saying ‘no’ ever stopped you?” Dean asks.

When Cas’s face falls, Dean immediately feels like a dick. Just because he’s got baggage a mile wide doesn’t give him the right to give Cas the brush-off like that. He’s the whole reason Cas is in this all-too-human mess. The least he can do is give him the time of day. 

Aiming for _comfortably approachable,_ Dean leans his elbows on the armpit-high stack of boxes between them and says, “Fire away.”

After another interminable minute of deliberation, Cas meets his eyes, blue as cobalt in the dim light. “Is sex with a partner more satisfying than masturbation?”

And _whoosh_ , that’s one big fifty-two pickup of feelings that Dean doesn’t super want to give names to right now. He picks one off the top, pointedly ignores the rest, turns it over and finds it to be _disappointment._ “You not having a good time there, buddy?”

“It feels—physically, it feels very satisfactory,” Cas says. “It’s after I’ve reached orgasm—”

“Whoa,” Dean holds up a hand, his breath doing a tilt-a-whirl inside his chest. “Easy on the details, pal.”

Cas chews on his lip for a second, and then says, “I feel lonely, after. Like there’s something missing, or that I’m missing out on.”

And damn, Dean’s heart goes out to the guy. Dean wouldn’t ever admit to being a cuddler, but there’s nothing like the sound of someone else’s breathing that makes the afterglow that much sweeter. Sometimes, you just don’t want to give up the press of skin or the smell of their sweat, and those tender, intimate moments—yeah. He misses that way more than the partner-in-orgasms, if he’s being truthful. “I, uh.” He wets his lips, watches Cas’s gaze flick down to follow the motion. “It's usually just a bartender in the backseat, for me, but even then, sometimes, yeah, that feeling of connection with somebody is—is really something. And when it’s someone like—like—”

“Lisa?”

“Yeah.” It still hurts sometimes, that old wound, a scar that twinges when it rains. “Yeah, that’s somethin’ else.”

Cas shifts again, the soles of his shoes loud on the concrete. “Do you miss her?”

“Sometimes.” He tries not to think about it, because you can’t change that kind of thing, and he’s gotten very good at not thinking about the painful pieces of his past that he can’t do anything about. It’s an alarmingly long list. “I don’t think I really miss her, specifically, anymore, but—the happily ever after thing, y’know? That was kinda nice.”

The silence weighs heavy, buzzing with ungrounded electricity and the scrape of Castiel’s breathing.

“I just—” Dean stops.

Cas encourages him with a tilt of his head and a concerned V in his brow.

“I just hope I didn’t miss my chance,” Dean says.

“At getting out?”

“At being happy. With… y'know, with somebody."

Cas shuffles a step closer, one arm climbing up on the opposite edge of the box from Dean’s. He's wearing one of Dean's old flannels today, gray and green with threadbare cuffs and a sewn-up slice in the shoulder. The lid is not that wide, only about a foot, and that puts Cas’s face alarmingly close to Dean’s. He should lean back. 

He doesn’t.

“For what it’s worth,” Cas says, “I don’t think you’ve missed anything.”

Dean clenches his fists against the box lid and determinedly does not move, neither backward nor forward. “Oh, yeah?”

“No. Dean, you are a worthy soul, and the most caring man I have ever had the privilege of meeting,” and _whoa,_ Dean did not sign up for this. His heart kicks right up into overdrive, and he actually laughs in Cas’s face, even if it comes out soft and quiet and doesn’t deter Cas in the least. “And I do not believe for a moment that Lisa was your only chance at happiness. Or even your best chance.”

“How d’you figure?”

Cas shakes his head. “You were only half yourself when you were with her, Dean. You deserve the happiness she brought you, but your greatest strengths were atrophying, unused. You deserve someone who can appreciate all that you have to offer.”

Well, if that doesn’t make Dean feel about two inches tall. He squirms, hands clenching into fists, and frantically searches for an exit. 

Instead he gets stuck staring at Cas’s fingers curled delicately on the edge of the box. They look soft, dextrous, but his palm is so square and strong. Dean’s fingers suddenly ache with wanting to reach out and curl them together. It’s a physical pull, a powerful draw that he resists only through a lifetime of knowing that he can’t have what he wants.

Then he makes the mistake of meeting Cas’s gaze.

That ethereal blue is no less enthralling for the fact that it doesn’t flash with the glow of grace. It’s like the sky just after sunset, when it looks so very endless. From this distance, Dean can see the darker ring around the outside and the ice-blue filaments closer in, his pupils wide. His whole face is lined in shadow and it makes him look—hungry. 

Wanting.

Dean licks his lips and wonders exactly what it is he wants.

And then—

Cas’s face contorts. Those eyes screw up and his lips warp into a grimace. Dean’s reflexes throw him backward barely a second before Cas gives an all mighty **_Heccc-chew_ ** _!_

“Gesundheit.”

~

In his room, alone, Castiel paces. 

As the leader of the Garrison, before all this had started—before _Dean_ —he had been a strategist. A warrior and a general. He’d led the armies of heaven into battle and won time and time again.

Never once had his conviction faltered. He’d had his orders, and he’d executed his missions flawlessly to achieve Heaven’s desired ends. He’d always been so certain of his plans, and so much more, cosmically speaking, had ridden on those decisions.

Now, the only edicts he’s receiving are his own, the commands of the heart and flesh. And all that’s at stake is the affection of one human man. 

Castiel has never been more terrified, nor has his control felt more tenuous than at this moment.

He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.

He does not like this feeling of blind clumsiness, but it seems to be the human way.

If he still had his grace, he could reach out to Dean and touch his thoughts, his feelings, to get some sense of whether he longed for Castiel the way Castiel longs for him. As it is, he’s stuck with ordinary human signals: lingering eye contact, the static charge of their close proximity. But is he the only one who notices these things? If Dean does not share his fevered cravings, then there’s nothing he can do about it, and Castiel’s heart whines a long, lonely loon-cry of misery at the thought.

Pacing in his room, he clenches his fists and stares at his phone, sitting squarely on his bed.

The time has come to make what could be the final maneuver in his half-cocked, ad hoc plan ( _Operation: Seduce Dean_ ). He has no idea if it will be effective, and the uncertainty itches under his skin, distinct from the thrum of arousal that surrounds this entire endeavor.

He knows Dean is in his room. He’d checked. He has his suspicions of what Dean might be doing in there.

Slowly, keeping his eyes on his phone as if it might leap at him, Castiel sheds his clothing.

Once he’s naked, cock already starting to rise, alert and needy— _frustrating, idiotic scrap of flesh_ —Castiel picks up the phone.

~

Dean checks no fewer than three times to make sure his door is securely latched. Turns up the heat is up in his room, fighting off the underground stone chill of the bunker so that he can lounge naked for as long as he wants. He’s got a beer and a whiskey in him, just enough to get him loose in the limbs. And he’s got his laptop open to a site he doesn’t let himself visit very often.

The only thing he doesn’t have is his lube. Because he gave it to Cas, like an idiot.

He thought about sneaking into Cas’s room to get it back, but in stark contrast to the past day or two of constant ambushing, Cas has barely left his room today. Dean’s curious, but not exactly concerned. The guy just discovered his dick, like, three days ago; he’s entitled to some alone time. And hell. Maybe it’s better this way.

He just hopes he’s getting good use out of that lube. 

Stretching out on his bed, still in his boxer briefs, Dean gives his cock a quick little squeeze, a mere pitstop as his hand travels up from his inner thigh to his chest. He’s plumped up a little just from anticipation, but he’s got a long way to go. 

On his screen, a buffet of masculine skin spreads out, unabashed and obscene. Quick video clips play as he scans his mouse over them: close-ups of dicks getting swallowed, dicks going into asses, tongues savoring neatly groomed assholes, broad chests and beefy arms, dudes embracing and staring into each other’s eyes.

Dean tries not to linger too hard on that last one. This whole thing makes his belly burn hot, but that? That’s a wrong turn down a dark road.

He clicks around, one hand on his dick, encouraging but not getting himself anywhere yet. He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. He does this so rarely, only when the craving gets _really bad_ , and right now, for inexplicable reasons, he just— 

He just needs this. 

He scrolls. He sorts by genre, skirting far away from the “boyfriends and romance” category and landing on “big dicks” almost by accident. Then the way one of the guys’ eyes roll back in his head when his partner slips two fingers in his ass grabs Dean by the cock and pulls him in.

The video plays, and Dean almost backs out in the first thirty seconds because they start out fully clothed and chatting while practically snuggling on a couch. But his dick grumbles at him, and he clicks forward a few minutes. There. Better. The guy who’s probably going to end up on bottom has the other guy pulled out of his jeans, and Dean gets an up-close look at pink lips wrapped around a firm shaft. 

Good. Yeah. He pulls himself out of his boxers and starts to stroke himself to fullness.

Clicks forward a bit until both guys are naked. The bottom has a spray of stars tattooed on his shoulder, and the top is—wow. 

Well, he did get himself into the “hung” category, after all. That monster looks like it could brush his knees, god damn.

Dean licks his lips, shifts on the bed, and even his ass clenching in his underwear is generating interest.

He should really get his lube back from Cas.

Tugging on himself in earnest now, Dean clicks deeper into the video, looking for the good stuff. Rimming, yeah, fingering, fuck yeah, but what he’s looking for is—

There. He sits up a little straighter, tightening his fist, not wanting to miss the moment when Mr. Hugedick first slides his cock into Star-Tat’s tight hole. 

_Shit._

He jerks harder.

Then slows, not wanting to fly right off the handle. This is no quick motel-room steam release. He can take his time. Really treat himself.

Why the fuck didn’t he get his lube back?

A crazy little voice in his head starts to whisper _you could call him._

Right. Call him right now. While watching gay porn with his dick out.

Mmhmm. Call Cas on the phone, maybe keep playing with yourself while you talk to him. While you ask him to bring the lube to your room. 

With a hiss and a thundering heartbeat, Dean has to take his hand right off his dick, though his hips still squirm and thrust up into an invisible touch. He looks down to watch his own head pulse and throb, foreskin shrinking back to expose his tip, a bead of precome welling up and falling onto his belly.

Eventually, he lets out a breath.

That was close.

Before he can properly turn his attention back to his video, his phone vibrates on his nightstand.

With his clicking hand, Dean tilts it so he can see the screen.

It’s Cas.

_Don’t do it._

With a lick of his lips, he smothers his better judgement under a pillow and swipes to accept.

He takes his other hand off his dick and reaches up to grab his own headboard, but doesn’t think to pause the video.

“What’s up?” he asks. A clench of his ass, his cock throbs.

Cas cuts right to the chase: “What’s the best angle for self-stimulation of the prostate?”

Dean drops the phone.

It doesn’t have far to go, just slips down to the pillow, but Cas’s voice goes tinny and distant until Dean can get it back up to his ear.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Dean says. “Uh. You sure you can’t figure that out from your research?”

“I’ve tried,” Cas groans, his breathing heavy like he’s—like he’s— 

Dean’s brain tries to skirt away from the thought, but it keeps getting drawn right back in.

“What have you tried?” Dean hears himself ask, like it’s not the worst question in the world.

“On my back,” Cas starts, and _fuck_ having a visual imagination. “With my legs apart and one hand reaching down. But then my wrist cramped and I failed to achieve the appropriate depth.”

Through the snow-white static in Dean’s brain, he registers that his left hand is crawling its way back to his dick like Thing from The Addams Family, totally with a mind of its own. He snatches it away and curls it into a fist next to his hip. “Uh. Try—Try on your side,” he says. “Kinda curl your knees up and reach back behind.”

There’s a rustling of blankets, and holy _fuck_ , he’s doing it right _now_ , mother of Christ, Dean’s about to vibrate right off the mattress. 

He should hang up. This is ridiculous. He should just hang up the phone right now and—and text him or something, tell him to knock it off.

He knows he’s not going to do that, though.

He’s not going to do that, because his dick is weeping on his own belly, and the video is still going strong on his laptop, the bottom taking that huge cock like an absolute champion, but he’s not paying the slightest bit of attention. Because nothing— _nothing_ —can compare to the mental image of Cas fingering himself.

He’s a terrible, horrible, rotten friend.

“ _Oh_ ,” Cas moans, and Dean’s brain blanks again.

“Better?” he asks. His voice sounds like a rubber band about to snap, but he can’t even care right now. His fingers press against the base of his dick, and it feels like a fucking felled log between his legs.

“It’s—yes. Better. Except—” Cas’s breath hitches, and Dean forces his fingers down to tug on his balls. “I can’t reach my cock like this,” he says, fucking _hell._

“You probably could if you hung up the phone,” Dean says, then winces, because there’s a part of him (a leaking, blood-stiffened part of him) that really doesn’t want Cas to hang up.

“I don’t think so,” Cas says. “I have the phone on the pillow and both hands free, and I still can’t reach my cock very well.”

“Who taught you to say cock, anyway?” Dean asks, one finger drawing idle circles up his own shaft to the twitching of his hips. “I woulda thought you’d be stuck saying ‘phallus’ or something.”

“I’m not an innocent, Dean,” he says, and that one single sentence undoes years of careful conditioning, a lifetime of repression, and sends Dean melting right through his mattress. He can’t control his hand anymore; he squeezes, and his hips jerk up into the pressure.

He must make some kind of noise because the next thing he hears is a questioning “Dean?”

“Yeah, I—I’m here.”

“What are you doing?”

Son of a bitch sounds like he knows exactly what Dean is doing. “Nothing,” he lies, even as his hand starts to move in furtive little strokes. Needing to stay quiet, needing to stay still, sends a tight frisson through his body.

Then Cas asks the dreaded question: “Are you touching yourself?”

All the blood in Dean’s body drains from his cock to his face, except it doesn’t, because he’s still absolutely stone-hard. Now they’re just both red-hot. “Look, you called at a bad time,” Dean says.

“And yet—” Cas’s voice hitches. Shit, does he still have his fingers up his ass? “And yet, you picked up the phone.”

Busted. “So what if I did?” _Lame_.

Cas doesn’t say anything for a moment; Dean’s ear strains to catch the static _whuffs_ of his breathing.

“Are you watching pornography?” Cas asks.

Only he could make that sound so sexy. “Kinda,” Dean says.

“How does one ‘kind of’ watch pornography?” Dean can almost hear the stupid air quotes, the goofy, adorable bastard. 

“Video’s over,” he says.

“I see.” There’s a pause; Dean strains his ears to catch the heaviness of his breathing, the rustle of his sheets. And then, “Was it enjoyable?”

“Uh,” Dean glances back at the video, gone still at the end with an enticement to become a paying member for exclusive content. “Yeah. Yeah, not bad.”

“Did it involve anal penetration?”

Son of a bitch. “Uh. Y-yeah.” He’d skipped right over boobs or pussy or any possible hint of heterosexuality and gone right for the butt stuff, what the fuck does this guy think he knows— 

“Dean.”

“What, Cas?”

“Would you show me?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the Culmination!
> 
> Thanks as always to [Elanor](https://elanor-n-evermind.tumblr.com) for the beta reading and for listening to my whinging.

If Dean had any blood left in his brain, he would spend the next few minutes finding another fucking video. Girls have asses, too. He could still salvage—something.

Instead, he fusses with his boxers, tucking himself back in and draping the sheet over his lap in some lame-ass excuse for modesty. 

Then Cas is knocking at the door.

He’s actually doing this. He’s gonna say  _ yeah, come on in, Cas, the water’s great. _

“Uh-huh,” he grunts. Then winces.

Apparently, that’s good enough for Cas, because he opens the door and slides inside.

Shuts it behind him, too.

And he’s not wearing a shirt. Jesus. Dean guesses he’s probably lucky he took the time to put on sweatpants.

Wonders if he’d put on anything else, or if he’s just free-ballin’ it.

When he looks—and oh yeah, of course he looks—he can see the outline of his cock clear as day, a formidable rise in the gray cotton. He’s surprised the drawstring hasn’t run up the white flag and surrendered yet; it certainly has a pole to fly it on.

“You’re gonna put somebody’s eye out with that thing,” Dean grumbles, trying to pretend his whole body isn’t ringing like the Liberty Bell as Cas shuffles toward the bed.

Cas sits. Fucking—just sits right down on the end of the bed. Then reaches into his pocket, and for half a second, Dean’s brain spins out of control that he’s going to touch himself through the fabric, that he’s going to have to watch Cas  _ touch himself _ , as if that weren’t an inevitable—

But he just pulls out a familiar blue squeeze-tube. “I brought your lube back,” he says.

Dean’s pretty sure he’s going to burst a blood vessel somewhere. “Thanks,” he says. He hadn’t even noticed the very obvious bulk in his pocket, too distracted by staring at his god damned dick.

Cas holds out the tube.

Oh. Right. Dean takes it, and carefully pays no attention at all to the moment when their fingertips brush.

“So, uh. Did the chafing ever get better?”

“Much,” Cas says. “But as I’m sure you surmised, I’ve started exploring other uses for personal lubricant.”

Why is it so damn hard to keep air in his lungs? Dean’s getting dizzy. “Right,” he says, tongue thick and stupid.

Like other things. Thick. And very, very stupid.

“Dean?” Cas says.

_ Yes _ , his brain screams,  _ yes, anything, fucking anything, Cas—  _

“Hm?”

“You were going to show me the video?”

Dean jerks away from Cas’s darkened eyes and flushed cheeks, the motion of his chest with his breathing and his lips with his words and—and focuses back on the laptop.

“Oh. Yeah.”

Cas shuffles and Dean scoots, still stubbornly under the sheet, and eventually they end up against the headboard with the laptop in the middle of the bed in front of them. Dean has one asscheek nearly hanging off the side in his efforts to put a reasonable amount of space between them—who the fuck is he kidding, they’re two dudes with massive erections (if he does say so himself) about to watch gay porn, there is no reasonable amount of space that doesn’t include a wall—but Cas seems determined to plop himself down just barely on his side of the middle. He even crosses his legs so that one knee is perilously close to Dean’s. Since when did they make queen-size beds so small, Jesus fucking Christ.

Dean clicks play.

He’d forgotten how the video started. Two normal-looking guys wearing normal-looking clothes, one with an arm draped casually over the back of the couch around the other’s shoulders. If it weren’t for the occasional close-ups of their fingers intertwining or low-angled shots of their crotches in jeans, this could be an interview on HGTV. It’s brightly lit and classy, scrupulously clean and pleasantly soft-focus.

Dean’s kind of grateful for the reprieve this time. Watching these two almost-snuggling, grinning flirtatiously at each other and the camera, gives Dean a chance to relax a little. Something to focus on that isn’t Cas, his own dick, or Cas’s dick. It’s kinda nice, actually, watching them be so comfortable with each other and themselves. Their names flash across the screen as they speak, and Dean learns that the bottom with the star tattoo is named Andy and the hugely hung top is Marcus. Such innocuous, normal names for two innocuous, normal-looking guys. Dean wouldn’t glance twice at them if he saw them in a bar.

Then, all at once, they’re kissing, and, okay, he might look twice at that. But only because it’s hot.

Really hot. Way hotter than kissing usually is in porn. Marcus has a razor-sharp goatee; Dean can see it pinking up the skin around Andy’s mouth. He usually skips this kind of thing, but maybe he should rethink that.

Then—

He feels a glancing nudge on his knee. It’s just Cas shifting in his seat, but it jolts him near out of his skin.

“Sorry,” Cas says. “Just getting comfortable.”

“S’fine,” Dean mutters. So much for relaxing.

Then Cas does it again. Scoots so that his knee is actually pressed against Dean’s, and the sheet and sweatpants are no shield at all to the heat of another body. All at once, Dean’s attention is torn between the dudes on the screen—who have wasted absolutely no time in getting their shirts off, it should be noted—and the visceral, kinesthetic awareness of Cas next to him. It’s like he can feel the entire shape of his body without even looking at him, a glowing beacon of Casness that just sits there. Being Cas.

Being shirtless.

Being aroused.

Being Cas being shirtless and aroused.

He shifts again, and Dean can’t not say something. “Dude, remember all those personal space talks we had? This is like. Extra personal space time.”

“I’m trying to see the screen,” Cas says, and he doesn’t even bother to make it sound like a real lie.

“Uh-huh,” Dean grumbles. 

Cas stays right where he is.

When Dean manages to focus back on the video, Marcus’s lips are wrapped around Andy’s pale-pink cock, and Dean becomes aware that, at some point, he’s going to have to touch his dick. Cas, too—might already be touching himself, actually, but he can’t bring himself to check even his peripheral vision to say one way or another.

Okay fine, he checks.

And he’s not—not really  _ touching himself _ so much as just cradling his dick in one hand like it’s a guinea pig snoozing in his lap. He hasn’t pulled himself out of his sweatpants or stuck his hand down inside, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less obscene. He’s tenting the cotton like a whole circus is coming to town, and the fabric is thin enough that it clings to his girth, hiding absolutely nothing. Especially not when Cas’s thumb makes a tiny petting motion across the tip, back and forth. Back and forth.

Dean’s mouth falls open, so  _ empty _ , letting a hot breath escape.

“Dean?” Cas asks, voice low and—and nervous. 

When Dean lifts his eyes to his face, for just a flash of a second, he sees such  _ heat _ in his eyes, such brazen want, that he almost dives in and snatches it up in both hands. But then Cas turns back to the video and clears his throat.

“Not that this isn’t—lovely, but. Um. I wanted to see the, uh. The anal penetration,” he says.

It’s too much. Too absurd. An unholy burst of giggles threatens to pop in Dean’s chest, but he manages to swallow it down. “Right,” he says.

Right, because of course, Cas is just here because he’s curious. Wants to know how to finger himself properly. He’ll watch that bit, and then—and then he’ll go back to his room to experiment without Dean ever having to see his dick.

The sour taste that thought leaves on his tongue should really tell him something.

Regardless, he reaches for the laptop and clicks forward to where everybody’s naked and Marcus has Andy’s cheeks spread for his own tongue, going to town on a preternaturally pink and hairless asshole. The wet shine of spit leaves everything glossy and slick, and Andy is clearly clenching and relaxing for show. Or maybe for his own fun, who knows?

Dean belatedly realizes he’s flexing his own ass, wishing it were a little fuller than it is. Where did they leave that lube, anyway?

That’s when Cas makes a sound—a whimpering sound, he’d say, except it’s about an octave too low to be a whimper. Dean can’t help it now, he looks right at Cas, stares at him, in fact, at his bitten lip and the desirous furrow in his brow. 

And it’s because he’s looking that Dean catches Cas glancing over at him.

He does it furtively, not blatant and obvious staring like in the shower the other day. Just a glance from under his eyelashes, but it covers a lot of ground from Dean’s lap, still tucked under blankets, up his bare chest and shoulders, stopping just short of eye contact, probably at his mouth.

The lube sits on the bedspread on Cas’s side of the laptop, as innocent as anything.

Dean skips ahead in the video. Andy’s on his back, hoisting his knees up to his armpits, leaking precome on the soft rolls of his stomach while Marcus tongues at his balls (freshly shaved) and slides two slick fingers into his asshole. 

“You—” Dean clears his throat, swallows against his heartbeat. “You tried it like this, right?”

“Yes,” Cas answers right away, voice deep and trembling. “But the angle—”

“Yeah, it’s—” Dean cannot believe he’s about to say this. “It’s better when someone else does it.”

Even though Dean is staring fixedly at the screen and definitely  _ not _ looking at Cas, he can see his head snap around in his direction.

“Yes,” Cas says, and it comes out with a lot more force than necessary. “Yes, I’m sure it is.”

_ Do you wanna— _ Goddammit, Dean’s not sure he can make himself say it.

“Dean?”

Dean makes some kind of sound. He’s not sure what, but his vocal cords do move.

“Does this make you uncomfortable?”

Dean’s gonna die, but not in a bad way. “Nah,” he says, not sure he can even see anything through the roaring of his ears, which makes no goddamn sense.

There’s a rustling of fabric, that much he hears, and when he looks—

There it is. Holy shit, there’s Cas’s cock. Fat and red and so hard, he can see the blood pulsing through him, and holy  _ mother,  _ leaking at the tip.

Dean has to hang on tight to the sheet to stop from reaching out.

Especially as Cas’s hand starts to move. Slowly at first, a delicate drag of fingers and palm over taut skin, Dean can see why he needed the lube. Dude doesn’t have a lot of skin to spare. It makes Dean’s mouth water, and he has to swallow hard and fast against the  _ I could help you with that _ that wells up in his throat.

Fuck it. If Cas can do it, so can he. 

He tugs at the sheet—stupid thing gets caught under his knee, and then tangled on his foot, and so much for stealthy—and before he can talk himself out of it, he’s palming himself through his boxers.

Cas makes a choked-off sound, somewhere between a cough and a hiccup. Dean reaches for the laptop, clicking backwards in the video, a bit of sleight of hand misdirection, like maybe Cas will miss the moment when he sneaks his hand under the elastic.

Touching his cock is like that first drink of water in a desert. A bit of tension drains from him, and he slouches back against the headboard. He is still blindingly aware of Cas at his side, possibly watching him—but no, they have a whole video there for distraction purposes. It’s fine. Haven’t you ever heard of a circle jerk? Abruptly, this all makes sense again, and Dean lets himself rub his foreskin up and over his head a few times, because as long as they focus on the porn and don’t  _ talk about it _ , this is fine.

Of course, that’s when Cas has to go and ruin it.

“You use your left hand to masturbate?” 

Dean freezes again. “Uh. So?”

“You’re right-handed.”

“What’s it to you?” 

In the hideous moment before Cas responds, there’s nothing but the buzz of Dean’s laptop and the furtive noises of hands on flesh. 

“Just curious,” Cas says.

“Yeah, you’re curious about a lotta things, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Cas says without hesitation.

Dean fixes his gaze on the screen, where Andy’s knees are up to his ears and Marcus is easing his cock into Andy’s slick hole. Andy sure seems to be enjoying it. Dean’s ass twitches in his boxers.

He resolutely does not look at Cas’s hard length.

He does not lick his lips.

“Aren’t you going to take yours out?”

Dean’s tongue feels thick and stupid in his mouth. “Uh. Should I?”

And then he makes the idiot maneuver of catching Cas’s eye.

He looks…

Hungry.

Dean does lick his lips this time.

“I’m curious,” Cas says.

And, well. How can Dean deny that?

He pulls his boxers down, hard cock popping up over the elastic and into the cold light of day. Goosebumps prickle up his arms and chest and down his thighs. Probably chilly. Definitely not the weight of Cas’s gaze on him. Nah. 

Cas makes another broken little sound, and Dean lets his hand stroke up and down once. Just once.

It trembles through his flesh, and Cas trembles with him.

“You’re uncut,” Cas says, his throat dry.

“Yeah, thanks to you.”

Son of a bitch, Cas’s confused little head-tilt is even cuter when he’s all flushed and half-naked. 

Don’t say cute. Not cute. Guys can be hot, sure, but never cute.

Fuck.

“When you yanked me from the pit? Healin’ all my scars and whatever,” he eventually manages, and Cas’s expression clears.

“Factory reset. Yes.” Dean watches his eyes cut over to the lube. “So you don’t need lubrication?” 

“Not really.” 

“Then. Why do you have it?”

Dean’s hand moves entirely on its own over his flesh, and his knees twitch apart without his permission. “Take a fucking guess.”

Cas is quiet for what feels like forever. Doesn’t say anything at all, and while Dean would have thought that would be an improvement, now it seems like a loss. 

“Oh,” he finally says.  _ “Oh.” _

“Yeah.”

“So—so you enjoy—”

“Yeah.”

Another long silence. Andy and Marcus are really getting up to speed, Andy riding him like a bucking bronco. 

“Dean?”

“What?” 

“I. Could you, um.” 

“Spit it out, Cas.”

“You said it was better with another person,” the words come tumbling out of Cas’s mouth, and. Well, Dean did ask. He asked, but he now he’s frozen to the bed, struggling to breathe, because he’s not sure if Cas is asking to touch or asking to be touched and both are terrifying, exhilarating, insane possibilities. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Dean’s heart starts kicking down the door. “I—I came here under false pretenses. If you don’t want this, I need to know so that I can leave with my dignity intact.”

Dean struggles to breathe again, and even manages a roll of his eyes. “Just shut up and hand me the lube.”

~~

Honestly, Castiel can’t quite believe it worked. A ruse to come into Dean’s room to watch porn together? Of all the haphazard tactics he could have come up with, this had to have been the most obvious.

In his defense, he wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

He thinks he might be getting the hang of wordplay, however.

Regardless, now he has Dean pushing himself up from the bed and tucking his cock back into his bottle-green boxers—a tragic loss—and looking at Castiel with his pupils blown wide and his lips half-parted. There’s still fear there, but Dean Winchester has never been one to back down simply because he’s scared.

The courage of the Righteous Man sends a shiver down Castiel’s spine.

“Okay,” Dean says. “Uh. Lose the pants.”

Castiel does. Dean watches. Cas wonders if he thinks he’s subtle in the way that he stares at every inch of revealed skin. Mostly a particular six. (Approximately. Not that Castiel has measured. He’s been meaning to.)

“Have you ever measured your erection?” he asks.

Dean’s head whips up. “What?”

“I’ve been told that men do that sometimes.”

Dean stares again for a moment or two, a slow grin lighting up his features before a veritable stormbreak of laughter. He flattens back out on the bed, weak in his mirth and covering his face in both hands.

“Jesus Christ, Cas, you nerd,” he says.

Being laughed at has never been particularly pleasant, but for some reason, when it’s Dean, it makes Castiel glow. It feels a lot like pride.

“It pays to be thorough,” he says, watching Dean laugh and feeling a grin spread over his face.

By the time Dean has stopped giggling and removed his hands, Castiel’s erection has calmed down, too, but there is still a thrum of anticipation under his skin. 

He hopes Dean will let him touch. 

"Okay," Dean says, gathering himself, scooting closer. "So. You just—just wanna know where your prostate is, yeah?” 

No. No, there is so much more that Castiel wants to know. But it’s a start. “I would like that, yes,” he says.

Dean’s hands on the insides of his knees are shocking in their familiarity. It’s the same touch Cas feels on his elbow or shoulder, moving him through doorways and into diner booths. It’s a touch that wouldn’t be out of place in a dark hallway where they can’t speak, lest they alert some monster of their presence. Now, that touch parts his knees to make room for Dean’s own body, and Castiel allows it, as always. 

Dean stares down at him, his expression one part wide-eyed awe, one part smirking bravado. “I think you’re gonna like this,” Dean says.

“I hope so.”

Castiel still feels slippery and slightly open from his own attempts, which had not been nearly as frustrating as he’d made it sound. He bears down on the emptiness in anticipation of Dean’s fingers.

“Just relax,” Dean says, squirting a dollop of lube onto his fingertip. He circles, warm and slow, patient and pleased. Castiel sucks in a breath and tries not to tense up as he eases past the outer ring.

And oh, god, it’s not like his own fingers.

“Easy,” Dean says. “How’s that feel?”

“Strange,” is Castiel’s only answer.

Dean’s finger halts and starts to withdraw. “Bad strange?”

“No,” Cas is quick to say. “Not bad. Just strange.” With closed eyes, he deliberately relaxes. “Keep going.”

“‘Kay,” Dean murmurs.

That single digit fucks deeper, and it is definitely starting to feel like a  _ fuck _ , even though he can’t be past the second knuckle. He works in and out of Castiel’s body with a slow and steady pace, deeper on each pass, and the sensation doesn’t change, exactly. It just… becomes pleasurable. 

“Oh,” Castiel groans.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Dean murmurs. “Good, now, huh?”

It’s a melting heat, like chocolate in the sun. “Yes.”

“Awesome. You—you’re doing great, Cas.”

Cas’s eyes open, and he’s almost blinded by the sight of Dean kneeling between his legs with one hand working into Castiel’s body and the other half-hidden in his boxers, tugging gently on his own cock.

A cocky grin, and Dean says, “Yeah, this might be why I’m a leftie.”

Heat spirals up Castiel’s belly at the thought of Dean’s fingers—the same fingers—tucked up tight inside his own body and— _ “Oh.” _

“Shut your eyes,” Dean murmurs.

Cas does, and his focus centers down to the stretch. He squeezes a little, and that one finger is abruptly huge and solid inside him.

“Relax,” Dean murmurs again, his voice gone soft and mellow. Cas deliberately relaxes, and Dean starts moving again, not thrusting, just slow side-to-side sweeps and gentle come-hither motions.

There’s no one moment when Castiel knows he’s found the prostate. It just builds, like fanning an ember into a blaze. What had been strange becomes delectable, a molten pleasure that spreads through Cas’s body from that single impaling contact.

“You like that?” Dean asks, and the stone-rough pleasure in his voice scrapes over Castiel’s skin, and Cas’s eyes fly open again.

Dean is a vision above him, open-mouthed and so intently focused—on  _ him _ , on Castiel. On his trembling thighs and plump, leaking cock, on his heaving chest and hot, flushed face.

“Yes,” he manages. “Yes, I like that very much.”

“Hey,” Dean says after a few timeless moments. “Can I try something?”

Half of Dean’s mouth, his perfect pink mouth, is curled up in a  smirk , and there’s a sparkle in those jade-hazel eyes that has always made part of Castiel perk up and pay attention. “Anything,” Castiel says, and he means it. His research has been extensive, and there is very little that he would outright reject if Dean were involved.

Dean pulls his hand out of his boxers, and Castiel has to watch, then, while it hovers over Cas’s thighs, his balls, his cock. He wants to strain up into that phantom touch, but he holds his breath instead. When it lands, his hand is warm and tentative on the base of his cock, and Cas’s spine bows with the effort of keeping his hips still. He has both of Dean’s hands, now one buried palm-deep inside him, the other flat on his most tender places, and he’s going to melt like an asteroid meeting the atmosphere.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” Dean says, quiet, like a secret.

Before Cas can ask what it is he means to do, he’s shouldered his way down between Castiel’s thighs and wrapped his lips around the tip of his cock.

The slick heat, the wet pressure, Dean’s  _ mouth, _ of all that is holy—

“ _ Dean _ —” he hears himself groan.

“Okay?” Dean asks, which is unacceptable, because it means his mouth has left Cas’s dick. (Not far. He can still feel his breath, the buzz of his lips against his frenulum, but—) 

“Yes. Yes, better than okay.” 

“Okay.”

All Cas can see is the top of Dean’s head, his broad, tanned shoulders spattered with pale freckles, but he can feel him growing bolder with his mouth. First, lips at the head, then the tender slickness of his tongue pressing against the sweet spot at the underside. Castiel feels all the air leave him on a moan, and before he knows it, one hand scrabbling at the short, soft buzz of hair at Dean’s nape. He doesn’t push, but he needs that grounding contact, and it means that when Dean bobs down and up again,  _ down, up again _ , he feels it in two places, his hand and his cock.

“Dean—”

“Good?” Dean asks between bobs.

“ _ Yes. _ ”

“Good.”

It’s better than his hand, of course it is. Slicker, hotter, all-encompassing, devastating, and in concert with the finger still swirling around inside of him, Cas isn’t sure which way he wants to work his hips. And when Dean makes a soft  _ hmm _ around his flesh, oh, it echoes all the way up Castiel’s chest and down his legs, not because of the vibrations—though those are nice—but because of the visceral evidence of Dean enjoying his own actions, of Dean enjoying  _ him _ — 

“Oh—” Castiel feels his fingers clutch and lightning flash over his skin. He can’t help but squeeze around the penetration, and it’s good, it’s so good, makes it feel like so much more than a finger—fuck. He wants  _ more _ . He’s straining, hips working back and forth between the stimuli like a man possessed. “Dean—” 

Dean’s chest spasms against Castiel’s legs, and he pulls off. His head nudges against Castiel’s grip in his hair, and he stares up with pink, spit-slick lips and bright eyes. “Careful there, buddy,” he says, and his voice sounds rough with either lust or from stretching around Castiel’s cock, or both. 

“Sorry,” Cas pants out. “Sorry.” 

“S’okay. It was hot. Just… Gaggy.” He pulls out, leaving Castiel’s ass feeling oddly empty, clutching at nothing, but his other hand can’t seem to stop moving. He rubs up his thigh and his hip, across his stomach and down to circle his cock where he’s wet from Dean’s own mouth. 

With trembling hands, Cas pulls Dean up by the shoulders until they're facing each other on the pillows, needing him closer. Just closer. Needing his skin. Dean’s hips roll against him, under his leg where Castiel has opened himself. He can feel the shape of him through the rough cling of boxers, blood-hot and solid against Castiel’s nakedness. He enfolds Dean in his limbs, working his hips in the instinctive pitch he’s discovered, the movement his body knows and never had to be told. It drags his hard flesh up and down Dean’s answering erection, and he can feel, he can  _ feel  _ Dean’s pleasure in return. “Fuck,” he swears into Castiel’s neck. “S’good, s’good,” muttered, desperate, under his ear. Dean’s free hand wanders from Cas’s hips up his back to his shoulders and then down, scraping nails, white lines of heat, down to flirt with the top curve of his ass. That skittish absence of touch is like its own maddening caress.

“I’d like to kiss you,” Castiel says, startling himself. “May I?”

Castiel feels Dean’s great intake of breath, the compulsive tightening of his arms. “Yeah.”

Cas pulls back enough to look Dean in the eye, then cups one stubble-rough, warm and weathered cheek in his palm. They’re so close, they’re already sharing breath, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to bridge the gap. Dean’s mouth is just as soft as he’d always thought it would be, and his kiss comes with a sound like a door swinging on old hinges. And just like that, he’s opening up, taking Castiel in.

Dean tastes like honey and salt and a slick, human taste that Castiel recognizes as  _ Dean _ . It’s the essence of the way he smells, the way he moves, the tingle that washes over Castiel when Dean does something awe-inspiring. It’s all here under his tongue. This man who has saved the world time and time again, this  _ hero _ , is pulling Cas in, drinking him down. Little sparks of friction catch fire on Castiel’s stomach, thighs, and chest, and he thinks he might have been wrong about his nipples, because when they rub against Dean’s chest—oh, that is a much more interesting sensation.

Dean breaks the kiss with a grumpy little grunt, and Castiel realizes belatedly that he’s tugging at one of his legs. “C’mon,” he says. “Up top.”

Right. Yes. Castiel swings his knee up and over Dean’s hips, settles his weight back down on his thighs. He likes this. Likes being able to examine Dean at length and in great detail. Reaching out, he brushes the backs of his knuckles up Dean’s chest, sliding through a slight sheen of sweat between his pectorals, feeling the rise as he takes in air. As an experiment, Castiel slides his fingers sideways to brush the tender nub of Dean’s nipple and gets a stuttering exhale for his efforts.

“Sensitive?” he asks. Dean nods. Reaches up. Pulls him down.

Their kisses go on and on, moving from soft explorations to begging questions, and finally to eager answering. When Castiel breaks for a breath, Dean’s head tilts back on the pillow, and the long slope of his neck proves too tempting to resist. Castiel needs the taste of his skin, salty and human, and Dean bares beautifully to his mouth.

“Shit,” he gasps. “Yeah, good—good.” Dean’s fingers card through Cas’s hair, holding him tighter to his neck. Cas sucks until they are both satisfied, until there’s a pink-and-purple splotch in the shape of his mouth. Then he leaves another below it. And another at the angle of his shoulder. 

“Didn’t know you were a vampire now,” Dean says, but it’s breathless and warm, and Castiel smiles against his collarbone.

“Would that make you a werewolf?” he asks.

“Uh,” Dean laughs, a juddering of his chest more than a sound. “Let’s not get into knotting kink just yet. That’s kind of an advanced lesson.”

Before Castiel can process the implications of words like  _ yet _ and  _ advanced lessons _ , Dean has turned his own mouth to Cas’s ear, and ohh, the shivering tingles that race over his scalp and down his neck knock all the thoughts from his head.

“So, you gonna touch me or what?” Dean asks, barely a whisper, like he half doesn’t want to be heard.

Oh, yes. Yes, touching Dean sounds like a fantastic idea.

Cas braces himself up on one elbow, just enough to get room between their bellies, and worms one of his hands down between them. He bumps past his own now-familiar cock to nudge his knuckles against the solid ridge in Dean’s boxers, and Dean exhales in a rush against his ear. Cas turns his palm, and the shape of him fills it, and he’s so hard,  _ so hard, _ and all for Castiel. Dean groans, a quiet  _ whuf _ of air, and presses himself up into Castiel’s touch; Cas squeezes, and his breath quickens in his chest. 

Slowly, slowly, Castiel trips his fingers under the elastic, into the humid heat. Oh, god, there it is—Dean’s cock is against his fingers, damp at the head, skin slick and soft and sliding, and Dean is sucking in breaths that come out on a whine, and— 

“You should be naked,” Castiel hears himself say. 

“Good—fuck, yeah, good idea,” Dean breathes. It’s a wriggling, slightly sweaty tangle of limbs, as neither of them really want to stop touching, but they both definitely want that last bit of clothing gone. Finally, as Dean finishes kicking his boxers off his foot, Castiel straddles him again, pressing their lips together for a clumsy half-kiss as he finally gets his hand around Dean’s cock. It’s familiar, yet strange, a satisfying weight in his palm, and the satin-over-steel of flesh under his fingers is quickly addictive. So is the hitch of Dean’s breath, the huffing groan as he tosses his head back in bliss.

“That’s—” Dean swallows, and Cas hears it. “That’s—yeah, just like that,  _ fuck— _ ” Dean’s hips never stop moving, pushing up into Castiel’s grip. “You can—tighter— _ fuck  _ yeah, let me—” He’s fucking Cas’s fist, and Castiel pushes and pulls along with his rhythm, feeling like his blood will boil out of his ears just from bringing Dean pleasure.

What if—

Belatedly, Castiel realizes that his own cock is right there, snugged into Dean’s thigh.

What if?

His own hands are quite large.

Scooting a little higher on his legs, Cas opens his hand, nestles his own cock up against Dean’s, and enfolds them both in his palm.

“Oh,  _ shit _ yeah,” Dean says, and god, he sounds like he’s grinning—laughing, almost. Castiel starts working his own hips in counterpoint to Dean’s, their cocks fucking against each other. The slickness of precome—both of them—and the glide of Dean’s foreskin makes for a silky, slip-sliding mess, and the pleasure quickly consumes Castiel from cock to crown.

“Shit— _ shit _ , Cas, stop, stop—” Dean sounds strangled, and Castiel freezes solid.

“What—what did I—”

“No, it’s—Just don’t wanna come yet, that’s all.”

Oh.

Oh, that’s fine.

“Shit,” Dean pants, getting himself under control, deliberately relaxing, all of him but his cock going limp into the bed. Then he slaps his hand around in the tangle of blankets. “Where’d that lube go?”

After an eternity of fumbling through the folds, Dean comes up triumphant.

“You still want fingers?” he asks, and Cas nods. He can’t stop touching. He wants his hands and his mouth on every inch of Dean. “Okay,” Dean continues. “But I’m not letting you hog all the fun this time.”

And in one quick motion, he bowls Cas over on his back again. There are kisses and hands and the sticky skip of skin, and then his hand is back between Cas’s legs, pressing two fingers in slow, slow, slow.

Castiel is going to die.

The stretch is sweet, the pressure like the burn of whiskey down his throat, good, good, _so_ _good._ Before he’s even all the way in, Cas is circling his hips again, rutting them down on Dean’s hand in time with the tentative thrusts Dean is giving him.

“Dean,” he groans. “Dean, come here.”

“I’m right here, baby,” Dean says, and Castiel is certain he didn’t mean to say that, but he brings Dean down to kiss him anyway. The angle isn’t perfect, but it lets him cling to Dean with his arms and knees, lets him breathe his air and hear the stutter of his heartbeat. “Fuck, Cas,” Dean murmurs against his lips.

“Do you—” Cas swallows. “Do you want to?”

Dean goes still. For a heart-stopping second, he goes completely frozen, and so does Castiel.

“Why don’t we work up to that?” Dean asks, face hidden in his neck and words soft in his ear.

A strange wave of feeling breaks over Castiel at that. “Alright,” he says, and brings Dean back to his mouth for kissing.

“Besides,” Dean says when he pulls back, bravado firmly back in place. “I got another idea.” Without removing his fingers—god, they’re twisting a little, and Castiel is alarmingly aware of every single twitch and turn of Dean’s body through the conduit of his hand—Dean grabs the lube again and hands it to Cas.

Numbly, Cas takes it. “What—”

“Think you can figure out what to do with that?” he asks, and the pink in his cheeks is not just the flush of arousal as he nods over his own shoulder.

“I can try,” Cas says.

It takes some maneuvering, especially since Dean flatly refuses to stop teasing against Cas’s prostate even while he shifts, but he ends up straddling one of Cas’s thighs so that Cas can reach around to find the valley between his cheeks. Cheeks which are round and smooth and deserve to be worshiped, and perhaps Castiel will get the chance. But right now he’s conscious of the slick, cold lube on two of his fingers as he moves his palm across the planes.

“Ohh yeah, that’s—yeah,” Dean groans as the pads of Cas’s fingers dip toward the hot center of him. “Don’t go slow. I can take it.” The words spread a sizzle of heat through Cas’s blood, and he feels his cock spit more precome against his own stomach.

He sinks one finger straight into the muscular vice of Dean’s body. And when Dean just works his hips—hard cock against Cas’s thigh, ass pressed back to his hand—follows it with the second.

_ “Yeah _ , that’s it, fuck, Cas—yes.”

It’s a blaze from then, a mirroring slip-slide, stretch and burn, melting shivery pleasure. Cas can’t get enough friction on his cock, but Dean’s is a solid line of heat leaking on his hip. It’s messy and absolutely graceless, the way they push and roll into each other, the way the fuck of Dean’s hips spurs them both to higher heights and—

“Ah  _ fuck— _ ” All at once, Dean’s tensing tight around Cas’s hand, and fucking  _ shaking _ , pushing his jerking cock into the jut of his hip as it swells, spurting slick and wet all over Castiel’s skin.

It drives him  _ mad. _ He did that, brought him pleasure. He drops his hand from where it’s clutched on Dean’s hip to his own cock and—it’s the wrong hand,  _ wrong hand _ ,  _ too dry,  _ but it barely matters, not while he still has Dean’s fingers in his ass—he jerks quick and tight—

“Hang on,” Dean says. He’s still unsteady, but he scrambles down, letting Cas’s fingers go as he gets back between Castiel’s legs and swallows him down again. He wastes no time, engulfing Castiel in slick heat, bobbing his head even as he beckons his fingers against that sweetest spot inside him, and that’s—

Orgasm is like a splash of hot oil. It sizzles over Castiel’s skin, spreading all the way to his edges and then collapsing, coalescing. He flies apart at the seams, disintegrating into the heat of Dean’s mouth, pulse after pulse down his throat.

It’s only as he comes down, melted back together, that he realizes he’d been gripping tightly to Dean’s head and shoulders with his legs and both hands. His cock flops drunkenly from Dean’s mouth, and Dean grins up at him, star-eyed.

“Uh.” Dean wipes his lips and nose with the back of his wrist. “I think it went in my sinuses.”

“Sorry,” Cas says, but what comes out on its heels is a giddy giggle. Once he’s started, he can’t stop, flying high on an addictive cocktail of hormones. He could have named them all, once, told you their exact molecular composition. Somehow, it doesn’t seem important anymore.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Dean grumbles, but he doesn’t sound upset. He just flops down next to Cas on the bed, on his back and looking entirely too pleased with himself.

When Castiel lunges toward him to kiss his own taste out of his mouth, the happy little noise he makes is one that will ring in Cas’s ears for a very long time.

~~

Who knew that a fallen angel would be such a clinger after sex? It doesn’t matter if the sweat and whatever else is making them stick together, or if Dean has lube in his hair and could probably stand to sit on the toilet for a few minutes. It doesn’t matter, because Cas is  _ snuffling _ against his chest, and Dean is busy trying not to call it adorable. Besides, he has his hand buried in Cas’s spectacular sex hair, petting his scalp and brushing out tangles from the whorls and probably getting lube in his hair, too. Serves him right.

“You passing out on me, there, Cas?”

“I’m entitled,” Cas says. “Getting you here took a lot of effort.”

Dean’s heart thuds hard against his ribcage, ready to make a break for it. “Seriously? Is that what this has all been about? You wanted in my pants?”

Cas is quiet for a moment. “Maybe,” he grumbles.

That. Is going to take some processing. He’s too blissed out to freak about it right now, but—

But what? This is  _ Cas. _ Cas, who’s seen all the ugliness of Dean’s life and is still here, somehow. More  _ here _ than ever, in fact. He fell. Lost his grace, his connection to heaven. And maybe Dean can’t ever repay what he’s lost, but. Well. Maybe he can give him this.

“You were right,” Cas says, squirming impossibly closer and tightening his arm over Dean’s chest. “This part is much better with a partner.”

Dean tries to pretend that the entire landscape of his heart isn’t shifting around inside his chest and just nudges a kiss into Cas’s hair. The dark strands catch on his stubble. He smells good. “Oh yeah? And what about the rest of it?” 

Cas lifts his head to study Dean from the distance of a few inches. The sleepy warmth in his eyes makes Dean want to do something stupid like bump their noses together, or maybe kiss him again. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a dumb idea. He definitely shouldn’t do it. 

“I think it merits further investigation,” Cas says, with just enough of a tilt to his lips that Dean catches the hope hiding around the corner.

Fuck it. It’s a good day for dumb ideas.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like, you can find me on [tumblr](https://jemariel.tumblr.com/post/638409868492079105/i-been-blind-a-destiel-fic) and give this post a reblog to help spread the word.
> 
> If you want to come hang out with a bunch of destiel nerds, you're invited to join the [Profound Bond Discord Server!](https://discord.gg/profoundbond) We only bite consensually. :D
> 
> Comments brighten my entire week and encourage me to keep writing. Thanks for reading! <3


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